Blindly Following Orders Quotes

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.

Q: What’s hard for you? A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.

There was a time when you trusted me with your life!” “And there was a time when you used your brain instead of blindly following orders,

But everything changes when you tell about life; it's a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. You seem to start at the beginning: "It was a fine autumn eveningin 1922." And in reality you have started at the end. It was there, invisible and present, it is the one which gives to words the pomp and value of a beginning... And the story goes on in reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in a lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: "It was night, the street was deserted." The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in a night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice. I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

There are, no doubt, lessons here for the contemporary reader. The changing character of the native population, brought about through unremarked pressures on porous borders; the creation of an increasingly unwieldy and rigid bureaucracy, whose own survival becomes its overriding goal; the despising of the military and the avoidance of its service by established families, while its offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values long dead; the pretense that we still are what we once were; the increasing concentrations of the populace into richer and poorer by way of a corrupt tax system, and the desperation that inevitably follows; the aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the legislature; ineffectual legislation promulgated with great show; the moral vocation of the man at the top to maintain order at all costs, while growing blind to the cruel dilemmas of ordinary life—these are all themes with which our world is familiar, nor are they the God-given property of any party or political point of view, even though we often act as if they were. At least, the emperor could not heap his economic burdens on posterity by creating long-term public debt, for floating capital had not yet been conceptualized. The only kinds of wealth worth speaking of were the fruits of the earth.

But I’d seen this kind of willful blindness before, women who insisted their boyfriends weren’t cheating in the face of all the evidence, people working for horrendous employers who’d persuaded themselves they were just following orders and doing what was necessary. There seemed to be no limit to the capacity of people to believe what they wanted to see...

Truth is mightier than the sword.” “And granddad’s squirrel gun,” he added. “The militias need to know what they are up against in order to be as effective as this country needs them to be.” “Granddad’s squirrel gun is no match for DARPA,” Mark agreed. “Squirrel guns in the hands of potentially 200 million people have the Feds sweating, though.” Becraft smiled. “They won’t be able to disarm this country. There are too many people already awake, aware, and armed.” “If the latest TV polls tell the people they are disarmed, they might blindly follow it,” Mark speculated. “People are what they’re told, and they love to be told what the majority is doing so they can do it too. It’s a socially engineered herd mentality.

...Someone can intentionally fake blindness for some secondary gain (malingering)--a prisoner who says he can't see in order to try to avoid going directly to jail. It is not difficult to figure out when patients say they are blind but can actually see. We have a simple test that lets us determine whether the eyes are functioning. Using a rotating striped drum, we test for something called optokinetic nystagmus. as the drum spins, normal eyes will be seen moving back and forth. If a striped rotating drum is not available, you can always use a picture of J. Lo's rear. Move it back and forth, and any normal eyes will follow.

There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders. You acknowledge their sentience but you ignore their personal liberties and freedom. Order a man to hand his child over to the state? Not while I am his Captain.

Bob Hope: You live here? Richard Carlson: Yes. Bob Hope: Well, maybe you know what a zombie is? Richard Carlson: When a person dies and is buried, it seems a certain voodoo priest will have the power to bring him back to life. Paulette Goddard: That's horrible! Richard Carlson: It's worse than horrible, because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them some times, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring. Bob Hope: You mean, like Democrats?

But in situations where innovations proliferate, where group boundaries are uncertain, when the range of entities to be taken into account fluctuates, the sociology of the social is no longer able to trace actors’ new associations. At this point, the last thing to do would be to limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations. To the convenient shorthand of the social, one has to substitute the painful and costly longhand of its associations. The duties of the social scientist mutate accordingly: it is no longer enough to limit actors to the role of informers offering cases of some well-known types. You have to grant them back the ability to make up their own theories of what the social is made of. Your task is no longer to impose some order, to limit the range of acceptable entities, to teach actors what they are, or to add some reflexivity to their blind practice. Using a slogan from ANT, you have ‘to follow the actors themselves’, that is try to catch up with their often wild innovations in order to learn from them what the collective existence has become in their hands, which methods they have elaborated to make it fit together, which accounts could best define the new associations that they have been forced to establish.

For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility. The problematic of writing is opened by putting into question the value of the arkhe. What I will propose here will not be elaborated simply as a philosophical discourse, operating according to principles, postulates, axioms, or definitions, and proceeding along the discursive lines of a linear order of reasons. In the delineation of differance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic because no transcendent truth present outside the field of writing can govern theologically the totality of the field. Adventurous because this strategy is a not simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal, a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development of the field. Finally, a strategy without finality, what might be called blind tactics, or empirical wandering if the value of empiricism did not itself acquire its entire meaning in opposition to philosophical responsibility. If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of differance, it no more follows the lines of philosophical-logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse, empirical-logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end.

Do you always blindly follow orders from your master? You are no more than a common mutt,’ Varg growled. Tain laughed. ‘He is not my master, jotun. I serve no god, so I certainly serve no man, not even The Serpent himself. I am merely interested in my own goal and completing The Serpent’s goal will lead me to mine.

In Dzogchen one learns to become responsible for oneself without following rules. A person who follows rules is like a blind person who needs someone to guide them in order to be able to walk. For this reason it is said that a Dzogchen practitioner must open his or her eyes to discover their condition, so that they will no longer be dependent on anyone or anything.

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, “tradition” should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour...the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

Your Lordship tempts his servant to see whether he remembers the revelations imparted to him. Trifle not with me, my Lord; I crave, I thirst, for more knowledge. Doubtless we cannot see that other higher Spaceland now, because we have no eye in our stomachs. But, just as there was the realm of Flatland, though that poor puny Lineland Monarch could neither turn to left nor right to discern it, and just as there was close at hand, and touching my frame, the land of Three Dimensions, though I, blind senseless wretch, had no power to touch it, no eye in my interior to discern it, so of a surety there is a Fourth Dimension, which my Lord perceives with the inner eye of thought. And that it must exist my Lord himself has taught me. Or can he have forgotten what he himself imparted to his servant? In One Dimension, did not a moving Point produce a Line with two terminal points? In Two Dimensions, did not a moving Line produce a Square with four terminal points? In Three Dimensions, did not a moving Square produce—did not this eye of mine behold it—that blessed Being, a Cube, with eight terminal points? And in Four Dimensions shall not a moving Cube—alas, for Analogy, and alas for the Progress of Truth, if it be not so—shall not, I say, the motion of a divine Cube result in a still more divine Organization with sixteen terminal points? Behold the infallible confirmation of the Series, 2, 4, 8, 16: is not this a Geometrical Progression? Is not this—if I might quote my Lord’s own words—“strictly according to Analogy”? Again, was I not taught by my Lord that as in a Line there are two bounding Points, and in a Square there are four bounding Lines, so in a Cube there must be six bounding Squares? Behold once more the confirming Series, 2, 4, 6: is not this an Arithmetical Progression? And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must have 8 bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, “strictly according to Analogy”? O, my Lord, my Lord, behold, I cast myself in faith upon conjecture, not knowing the facts; and I appeal to your Lordship to confirm or deny my logical anticipations. If I am wrong, I yield, and will no longer demand a fourth Dimension; but, if I am right, my Lord will listen to reason. I ask therefore, is it, or is it not, the fact, that ere now your countrymen also have witnessed the descent of Beings of a higher order than their own, entering closed rooms, even as your Lordship entered mine, without the opening of doors or windows, and appearing and vanishing at will? On the reply to this question I am ready to stake everything. Deny it, and I am henceforth silent. Only vouchsafe an answer.

People from one side of the border most proudly kill people from the other side of the border and they call it patriotism. If this is patriotism, then I'd rather be the most unpatriotic person on earth, than be a savage patriot with no more brains in the skull than a neanderthal. Whom are you fighting, who are your enemies, and on whose orders are you fighting them, and how much sure are you that the superiors and their political authorities who are giving you all those commands, are actually even capable of making decisions on matters of peace and progress! Being a politician, doesn't mean being capable of making the best decisions for a people. So, if you keep following their commands like blind dogs in the hope of some miserable medals, then they'll rip this world apart into pieces and you are going to be the ammunition in that deed. You are born a human, so act like one, not for god’s sake, but for your children’s sake.

Blindly reaching out for his bottle of Madame Beffy’s Headache Tonic, he knocked over a vase filled with glass marbles. They fell to the floor with a great clatter. As he watched them bouncing and skittering across the floor, he had an unexpected thought. The wild, chaotic path of the marbles was not really chaotic at all. Each marble was precisely following the known laws of physical motion. He was not witnessing chaos, but order and perfection. Each marble was exactly where it should be at every moment in time.

We see throughout the world extremes of poverty and riches, abundance and at the same time starvation; we have class distinction and racial hatred, the stupidity of nationalism and the appalling cruelty of war. There is exploitation of man by man; religions with their vested interests have become the means of exploitation, also dividing man from man. There is anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, frustration. We see all this. It is part of our daily life. Caught up in the wheel of suffering, if you are at all thoughtful you must have asked yourself how these human problems can be solved. Either you are conscious of the chaotic state of the world, or you are completely asleep, living in a fantastic world, in an illusion. If you are aware, you must be grappling with these problems. In trying to solve them, some turn to experts for their solution, and follow their ideas and theories. Gradually they form themselves into an exclusive body, and thus they come into conflict with other experts and their parties; and the individual merely becomes a tool in the hands of the group or of the expert. Or you try to solve these problems by following a particular system, which, if you carefully examine it, becomes merely another means of exploiting the individual. Or you think that to change all this cruelty and horror there must be a mass movement, a collective action. Now the idea of a mass movement becomes merely a catchword if you, the individual, who are part of the mass, do not understand your true function. True collective action can take place only when you, the individual, who are also the mass, are awake and take the full responsibility for your action without compulsion. Please bear in mind that I am not giving you a system of philosophy which you can follow blindly, but I am trying to awaken the desire for true and intelligent fulfillment, which alone can bring about happy order and peace in the world. There can be fundamental and lasting change in the world, there can be love and intelligent fulfillment, only when you wake up and begin to free yourself from the net of illusions, the many illusions which you have created about yourself through fear.

in the spring of 1945 the Third Reich simply ceased to exist. There was no longer any German authority on any level. The millions of soldiers, airmen and sailors were prisoners of war in their own land. The millions of civilians were governed, down to the villages, by the conquering enemy troops, on whom they depended not only for law and order but throughout that summer and bitter winter of 1945 for food and fuel to keep them alive. Such was the state to which the follies of Adolf Hitler—and their own folly in following him so blindly and with so much enthusiasm—had brought them, though I found little bitterness toward him when I returned to Germany that fall.

Somewhat less appropriate was the blast that came from the loudspeaker, recently it had spoken on certain days, on others not at all, but always at the same time, as had been promised, clearly there was a timer in the transmitter which at the precise moment started up the recorded tape, the reason why it should have broken down from time to time we are never likely to know, these are matters for the outside world, it is in any case serious enough, insofar as it muddled up the calendar, the so-called counting of the days, which some blind men, natural obsessives, or lovers of order, which is a moderate form of obsession, had tried scrupulously to follow by making little knots in a piece of string...

In its endeavour, science is communism. In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal. Not orders, but advice, determine action. Each man knows that only by advice, honestly and disinterestedly given, can his work succeed, because such advice expresses as near as may be the inexorable logic of the material world, stubborn fact.

Our souls may be considered as consisting of two parts, which theologians call the superior and the inferior parts. The first is the seat of the will and of reason, the natural light with which God endowed us at creation. This noble and beautiful gift of reason makes man the image of God and capable of enjoying God, and raises him to a companionship with the angels. The inferior part of the soul is the seat of the sensual appetites, which have been given to us to aid us in procuring the necessities of life and in preserving the human race. But these appetites are blind – they must follow the guidance of reason. They are unfitted to command, and, therefore, like good stewards, they should act only in obedience to their master. Alas! How often do we see this order reversed! How often do we behold the servant become the master!

Among the most virulent of all such cultural parasite-equivalents is the religion-based denial of organic evolution. About one-half of Americans (46 percent in 2013, up from 44 percent in 1980), most of whom are evangelical Christians, together with a comparable fraction of Muslims worldwide, believe that no such process has ever occurred. As Creationists, they insist that God created humankind and the rest of life in one to several magical mega-strokes. Their minds are closed to the overwhelming mass of factual demonstrations of evolution, which is increasingly interlocked across every level of biological organization from molecules to ecosystem and the geography of biodiversity. They ignore, or more precisely they call it virtue to remain ignorant of, ongoing evolution observed in the field and even traced to the genes involved. Also looked past are new species created in the laboratory. To Creationists, evolution is at best just an unproven theory. To a few, it is an idea invented by Satan and transmitted through Darwin and later scientists in order to mislead humanity. When I was a small boy attending an evangelical church in Florida, I was taught that the secular agents of Satan are extremely bright and determined, but liars all, man and woman, and so no matter what I heard I must stick my fingers in my ears and hold fast to the true faith. We are all free in a democracy to believe whatever we wish, so why call any opinion such as Creationism a virulent cultural parasite-equivalent? Because it represents a triumph of blind religious faith over carefully tested fact. It is not a conception of reality forged by evidence and logical judgment. Instead, it is part of the price of admission to a religious tribe. Faith is the evidence given of a person’s submission to a particular god, and even then not to the deity directly but to other humans who claim to represent the god. The cost to society as a whole of the bowed head has been enormous. Evolution is a fundamental process of the Universe, not just in living organisms but everywhere, at every level. Its analysis is vital to biology, including medicine, microbiology, and agronomy. Furthermore psychology, anthropology, and even the history of religion itself make no sense without evolution as the key component followed through the passage of time. The explicit denial of evolution presented as a part of a “creation science” is an outright falsehood, the adult equivalent of plugging one’s ears, and a deficit to any society that chooses to acquiesce in this manner to a fundamentalist faith.

Follow me, my dear protesters! We will get to the bottom of this today!” “Yeah!” The crowd cheered him on. “We will take the Mayor down!” Pegg shouted. “We will take the Mayor down!” The crowd repeated. “We will take the Mayor down!” Pegg shouted again. “We will take the Mayor down!” The crowd chanted. At one point, Pegg tripped on a rock and fell. “Ouch! My knees!” He yelled in pain. “Ouch! My knees!” The crowd went along with him. “No, don’t repeat that!” Pegg asked. “No! Don’t repeat that!” The crowd blindly followed his voice. “What a bunch of stupid Piglins,” Pegg mumbled. “Wait a minute; we are heading to the wrong place. The City Hall is to the other side!” Pegg yelled. “The City Hall is to the other side!” The crowd chanted ignoring his orders and continuing in the wrong direction. “No, wait! Stop!” Pegg ordered. “No, wait! Stop!” The crowd simply repeated everything but didn’t actually pay attention to what Pegg was saying. “This is a mess!” Pegg cursed at the crowd. “This is a mess!” They shouted. Peter and I looked at each other. “I suppose leading a crowd that big isn’t as easy as he thought.” Peter mentioned.

They went on arguing, but Maia had forgotten them again, following Finn in her mind. Where was he? Did he have enough wood for the firebox? Were his maps accurate? Did he miss her at all? Finn did miss her--she would have been surprised to know how much. He had never sailed the Arabella alone for any distance and it wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped. While she was under way he managed well, but when it came to anchoring in the evening or setting off at dawn, he would have given anything for another pair of hands. Not any pair of hands--Maia’s. She had obeyed his orders quickly but not blindly; he had learned to trust her completely. And she was nice. Fun. Quick to catch a joke and so interested in everything--asking about the birds, the plants. This morning he had found himself starting to say, “Look, Maia!” when he saw an umbrella bird strutting along a branch, and when he realized that she wasn’t there, the exotic creature, with its sunshade of feathers, had seemed somehow less exciting. After all, sharing was something everyone wanted to do. He could hear his father’s voice calling, “Look, Finn, over there!” a dozen times a day.

One could understand feminism generally as an attack on woman as she was under “patriarchy” (that concept is a social construction of feminism). The feminine mystique was her ideal; in regard to sex, it consisted of women’s modesty and in the double standard of sexual conduct that comes with it, which treated women’s misbehavior as more serious than men’s. Instead of trying to establish a single standard by bringing men up to the higher standard of women, as with earlier feminism, today’s feminism decided to demand that women be entitled to sink to the level of men. It bought into the sexual revolution of the late sixties and required that women be rewarded with the privileges of male conquest rather than, say, continue serving as camp followers of rock bands. The result has been the turn for the worse. ... What was there in feminine modesty that the feminists left behind? In return for women’s holding to a higher standard of sexual behavior, feminine modesty gave them protection while they considered whether they wanted to consent. It gave them time: Not so fast! Not the first date! I’m not ready for that! It gave them the pleasure of being courted along with the advantage of looking before you leap. To win over a woman, men had to strive to express their finer feelings, if they had any. Women could judge their character and choose accordingly. In sum, women had the right of choice, if I may borrow that slogan. All this and more was social construction, to be sure, but on the basis of the bent toward modesty that was held to be in the nature of women. That inclination, it was thought, cooperated with the aggressive drive in the nature of men that could be beneficially constructed into the male duty to take the initiative. There was no guarantee of perfection in this arrangement, but at least each sex would have a legitimate expectation of possible success in seeking marital happiness. They could live together, have children, and take care of them. Without feminine modesty, however, women must imitate men, and in matters of sex, the most predatory men, as we have seen. The consequence is the hook-up culture now prevalent on college campuses, and off-campus too (even more, it is said). The purpose of hooking up is to replace the human complexity of courtship with “good sex,” a kind of animal simplicity, eliminating all the preliminaries to sex as well as the aftermath. “Good sex,” by the way, is in good part a social construction of the alliance between feminists and male predators that we see today. It narrows and distorts the human potentiality for something nobler and more satisfying than the bare minimum. The hook-up culture denounced by conservatives is the very same rape culture denounced by feminists. Who wants it? Most college women do not; they ignore hookups and lament the loss of dating. Many men will not turn down the offer of an available woman, but what they really want is a girlfriend. The predatory males are a small minority among men who are the main beneficiaries of the feminist norm. It’s not the fault of men that women want to join them in excess rather than calm them down, for men too are victims of the rape culture. Nor is it the fault of women. Women are so far from wanting hook-ups that they must drink themselves into drunken consent — in order to overcome their natural modesty, one might suggest. Not having a sociable drink but getting blind drunk is today’s preliminary to sex. Beautifully romantic, isn’t it?

There are, no doubt, lessons here for the contemporary reader. The changing character of the native population, brought about through unremarked pressures on porous borders; the creation of an increasingly unwieldy and rigid bureaucracy, whose own survival becomes its overriding goal; the despising of the military and the avoidance of its service by established families, while its offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values long dead; the pretense that we still are what we once were; the increasing concentrations of the populace into richer and poorer by way of a corrupt tax system, and the desperation that inevitably follows; the aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the legislature; ineffectual legislation promulgated with great show; the moral vocation of the man at the top to maintain order at all costs, while growing blind to the cruel dilemmas of ordinary life—these are all themes with which our world is familiar, nor are they the God-given property of any party or political point of view, even though we often act as if they were. At least, the emperor could not heap his economic burdens on posterity by creating long-term public debt, for floating capital had not yet been conceptualized.

What?” Clarissa glanced blankly at the dark blur beside her. “Keep your eyes closed, and you will not lose your balance,” the man suggested, and she saw his hand move closer to her. He was offering it so that she would rise. Clarissa opened her mouth to refuse, then paused as his hand suddenly enclosed hers, sending a shock of sensation racing up her arm. It was such an odd feeling—excitement, wild excitement—coursing across her flesh. “I do not….” she began faintly with bewilderment, pausing when his hand lifted her chin and the man bent to stare into her eyes. Close enough to kiss, she thought vaguely. Good God, Clarissa realized, close enough to see! For one brief second she stared into the most beautiful set of clear brown eyes she’d ever seen; then he pulled back slightly, out of focus. “Trust me.” It was not so much a request as an order. But Clarissa remembered those eyes, so dark, so kind—and she nodded. Then he was tugging her out of her seat, directing her through the crowd of dancers to the middle of the floor. “Now…” His voice was calm and soothing as he turned her to face him. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, lifting her free hand to his shoulder. “Relax.” His voice was almost hypnotic, Clarissa thought vaguely. “Follow me. I will not allow you to stumble.” -Clarissa & Adrian

They stood on tiptoe, strained their eyes. “Let me look.” “Well, look then.” “What you see?” That was the question. No one saw anything. Then, simultaneously, three distinct groups of marchers came into view. One came up 125th Street from the east, on the north side of the street, marching west towards the Block. It was led by a vehicle the likes of which many had never seen, and as muddy as though it had come out of East River. A bare-legged black youth hugged the steering-wheel. They could see plainly that he was bare-legged for the vehicle didn’t have any door. He, in turn, was being hugged by a bare-legged white youth sitting at his side. It was a brotherly hug, but coming from a white youth it looked suggestive. Whereas the black had looked plain bare-legged, the bare-legged white youth looked stark naked. Such is the way those two colors affect the eyes of the citizens of Harlem. In the South it’s just the opposite. Behind these brotherly youths sat a very handsome young man of sepia color with the strained expression of a man moving his bowels. With him sat a middle-aged white woman in a teen-age dress who looked similarly engaged, with the exception that she had constipation. They held a large banner upright between them which read: BROTHERHOOD! Brotherly Love Is The Greatest! Following in the wake of the vehicle were twelve rows of bare-limbed marchers, four in each row, two white and two black, in orderly procession, each row with its own banner identical to the one in the vehicle. Somehow the black youths looked unbelievably black and the white youths unnecessarily white. These were followed by a laughing, dancing, hugging, kissing horde of blacks and whites of all ages and sexes, most of whom had been strangers to each other a half-hour previous. They looked like a segregationist nightmare. Strangely enough, the black citizens of Harlem were scandalized. “It’s an orgy!” someone cried. Not to be outdone, another joker shouted, “Mama don’t ’low that stuff in here.” A dignified colored lady sniffed. “White trash.” Her equally dignified mate suppressed a grin. “What else, with all them black dustpans?” But no one showed any animosity. Nor was anyone surprised. It was a holiday. Everyone was ready for anything. But when attention was diverted to the marchers from the south, many eyes seemed to pop out in black faces. The marchers from the south were coming north on the east side of Seventh Avenue, passing in front of the Scheherazade bar restaurant and the interdenominational church with the coming text posted on the notice-board outside: SINNERS ARE SUCKERS! DON’T BE A SQUARE! What caused the eyes of these dazed citizens to goggle was the sight of the apparition out front. Propped erect on the front bumper of a gold-trimmed lavender-colored Cadillac convertible driven by a fat black man with a harelip, dressed in a metallic-blue suit, was the statue of the Black Jesus, dripping black blood from its outstretched hands, a white rope dangling from its broken neck, its teeth bared in a look of such rage and horror as to curdle even blood mixed with as much alcohol as was theirs. Its crossed black feet were nailed to a banner which read: THEY LYNCHED ME! While two men standing in the back of the convertible held aloft another banner reading: BE NOT AFRAID!

First of all, she was uncertain how to read the statement. Did Harry actually mean what he said, or was there another underlying message? Did he mean “Wow, you are so completely unattractive, no other man could possibly be interested in you, so I’ll take advantage of you by pretending to desire you. And maybe I’ll get lucky and get laid while having a big laugh at your expense?” Or did he mean “I’ll tell you this to make you feel better because, even though it’s not completely true, you don’t repulse me, and if we do end up having sex, I’ll just make sure all the lights are off.” “Look, Allie, I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything,” Harry said. “I mean, by saying what I said back in the car . . .” Alessandra realized that she had blindly followed him and they were standing on one of the lines, waiting to order their daily indigestion. She had been staring sightlessly up at the menu. “It’s just . . . You wanted honesty,” he continued, “and I . . .” He shrugged. “I took it a little too far, as usual. Some things probably just shouldn’t be said.” “I don’t know how to do this,” Alessandra admitted. “Talking to men was easy when I was beautiful. But now . . .” Harry was looking at her, studying her very naked, very plain face, his dark brown eyes so intense. It was as if the crowd around them had ceased to exist, as if they were the only two people standing in that fast-food lobby. He touched her hair, pushing a limp lock back behind her ear. “The haircut really sucks,” he told her. She closed her eyes. “Yes, I believe you mentioned that once already today.” “But it’s just hair.” “Spoken by the reigning king of bad hair days.” She reached up and took off his baseball cap. His hair, as usual, was standing up in all directions. He shrugged. “Maybe we should just get matching Mohawks.” Alessandra had to laugh. He touched her again, his fingers warm and slightly rough against her cheek. “You’re still beautiful,” he said softly.

For, finally, what is the rank man occupies in Nature? A nonentity, as contrasted with infinity; a universe, contrasted with nonentity; a middle something between everything and nothing. He is infinitely remote from these two extremes; his existence is not less distant from the nonentity out of which he is taken, than from the infinity in which he is engulfed. His intellect holds the same rank in the order of intelligences, as his body does in the material universe, and all it can attain is, to catch some glimpses of objects that occupy the middle, in eternal despair of knowing either extreme—all things have sprung from nothing, and are borne forward to infinity. Who can follow out such an astonishing career? The Author of these wonders, and he alone, can comprehend them. This condition, the middle, namely, between two extremes, is characteristic of all our faculties. Our senses perceive nothing in the extreme. A very loud sound deafens us; a very intense light blinds us; a very great or a very short distance disables our vision; excessive length or excessive brevity obscures discourse; too much pleasure cloys, and unvaried harmony offends us. Extreme heat, or extreme cold, destroys sensation. Any qualities in excess are hurtful to us, and pass beyond the ranges of our senses. We cannot be said to feel them, but to endure them. Extreme youth and extreme old age alike enfeeble the mind; too much or too little food, disturbs its operations; too much, or too little instruction, represses its vigor. Extremes are to us, as though they did not exist, and we are nothing in reference to them. They elude us, or we elude them. Such is our real state; our acquirements are confined within limits which we cannot pass, alike incapable of attaining universal knowledge or of remaining in total ignorance. We are in the middle of a vast expanse, always unfixed, fluctuating between ignorance and knowledge; if we think of advancing further, our object shifts its position and eludes our grasp; it steals away and takes an eternal flight that nothing can arrest. This is our natural condition, altogether contrary, however, to our inclinations. We are inflamed with a desire of exploring everything, and of building a tower that shall rise into infinity, but our edifice is shattered to pieces, and the ground beneath it discloses a profound abyss.

8 THE JOURNEY TO Skoda took three days, for the company traveled warily. Acuas told Decado that following the slaying of the soldiers, the Delnoch fortress commander had sent patrols throughout Skultik and the surrounding countryside, while to the south legion riders scouted the lands for rebels. Tenaka took time to speak with the leaders of the Thirty, for despite the many legends, he knew little of their order. According to the stories, the Thirty were semigods with awesome powers who chose to die in wars against evil. The last time they had appeared had been at Dros Delnoch, when the albino Serbitar had stood beside the Earl of Bronze and defied the hordes of Ulric, the greatest Nadir warlord of all time. But though Tenaka questioned the leaders, he learned little. They were courteous and polite—even distantly friendly—but their answers floated above his head like clouds beyond the grasp of common men. Decado was no different; he would merely smile and change the subject. Tenaka was not a religious man, yet he felt ill at ease among these warrior-priests and his mind constantly returned to the words of the blind seeker. “Of gold and ice and shadow …” The man had predicted that the trio would come together. And they had. He had also foreseen the danger of the Templars. On the first night of their journey Tenaka approached the elderly Abaddon, and the two walked away from the fire together. “I saw you in Skultik,” said Tenaka. “You were being attacked by a Joining.” “Yes. I apologize for the deceit.” “What was the reason for it?” “It was a test, my son. But not merely of you—of ourselves.” “I do not understand,” said Tenaka. “It is not necessary that you should. Do not fear us, Tenaka. We are here to help you in whatever way we can.” “Why?” “Because it serves the Source.” “Can you not answer me without religious riddles? You are men. What do you gain from this war?” “Nothing in this world.” “You know why I came here?” “Yes, my son. To purge your mind of guilt and grief, to drown it in Ceska’s blood.” “And now?” “Now you are caught up in forces beyond your control. Your grief is assuaged by your love for Renya, but the guilt remains. You did not obey the call—you left your friends to be butchered by the Joinings of Ceska. You ask yourself if it would have been different had you come. Could you have defeated the Joinings? You torment yourself thus.” “Could I have defeated the Joinings?” “No,

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I’ve been travelling for three years, I’ve been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: you never leave a woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. There are moments—rarely—when you make a landmark, you realize that you’re going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926. That’s living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it’s a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. [...] “I was out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles.” This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions. And the story goes on in the reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in a lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: “It was night, the street was deserted.” The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in a night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice. I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

Be thou joyous, Prince! Whose lot is set apart for heavenly Birth. Two stamps there are marked on all living men, Divine and Undivine; I spake to thee By what marks thou shouldst know the Heavenly Man, Hear from me now of the Unheavenly! They comprehend not, the Unheavenly, How Souls go forth from Me; nor how they come Back unto Me: nor is there Truth in these, Nor purity, nor rule of Life. "This world Hath not a Law, nor Order, nor a Lord," So say they: "nor hath risen up by Cause Following on Cause, in perfect purposing, But is none other than a House of Lust." And, this thing thinking, all those ruined ones—Of little wit, dark-minded—give themselves To evil deeds, the curses of their kind. Surrendered to desires insatiable, Full of deceitfulness, folly, and pride, In blindness cleaving to their errors, caught Into the sinful course, they trust this lie As it were true—this lie which leads to death—Finding in Pleasure all the good which is, And crying "Here it finisheth!" Ensnared In nooses of a hundred idle hopes, Slaves to their passion and their wrath, they buy Wealth with base deeds, to glut hot appetites; "Thus much, to-day," they say, "we gained! thereby Such and such wish of heart shall have its fill; And this is ours! and th' other shall be ours! To-day we slew a foe, and we will slay Our other enemy to-morrow! Look! Are we not lords? Make we not goodly cheer? Is not our fortune famous, brave, and great? Rich are we, proudly born! What other men Live like to us? Kill, then, for sacrifice! Cast largesse, and be merry!" So they speak Darkened by ignorance; and so they fall—Tossed to and fro with projects, tricked, and bound In net of black delusion, lost in lusts—Down to foul Naraka. Conceited, fond, Stubborn and proud, dead-drunken with the wine Of wealth, and reckless, all their offerings Have but a show of reverence, being not made In piety of ancient faith. Thus vowed To self-hood, force, insolence, feasting, wrath, These My blasphemers, in the forms they wear And in the forms they breed, my foemen are, Hateful and hating; cruel, evil, vile, Lowest and least of men, whom I cast down Again, and yet again, at end of lives, Into some devilish womb, whence—birth by birth—The devilish wombs re-spawn them, all beguiled; And, till they find and worship Me, sweet Prince! Tread they that Nether Road. The Doors of Hell Are threefold, whereby men to ruin pass,—The door of Lust, the door of Wrath, the door Of Avarice. Let a man shun those three! He who shall turn aside from entering All those three gates of Narak, wendeth straight To find his peace, and comes to Swarga's gate.

and self-responsibility can only occur where the child is surrounded with moral behavior and allowed to grow her own understanding of the ideals of integrity, interdependence and interconnectedness. He put it this way, “Moral autonomy appears when the mind regards as necessary an ideal that is independent of all external pressure.” But this moral autonomy is not supported in our topsy-turvy school and family systems where respect for authority actually means fear of authority. Where there is fear there cannot be respect. Although a child may envy or fear the power a parent or teacher wields over them, their feelings do not include the sacred, essential quality of loving reverence which makes respect, respect. It is akin to the battered dependent wife saying she loves and respects her abuser, when her daily experience is fear. Jerry Jampolsky, author and founder of the Center for Attitudinal Healing, reminds us that it is fear, not hate, that is love’s opposite. If, however, a truly educational atmosphere is created based on respect for autonomy instead of intimidating indoctrination, children can then deeply understand that rules are needed to maintain the social order, and do not have to be obeyed out of a blind acquiescence to authority, but are followed on the bases of mutual agreement. At the same time, the needs of the individual are protected and respected. Nice “Guise”and Gals It is at this Stage Six—Universal Ethical

Religion is somewhat of a' divine' business based on human fear of death. In order to gain the Eternal life in Heaven, offered by God, humans are ready to follow the conditions of the 'divine' contract, the Holy Book, which completely expresses the divine will: everyone has to think, behave and choose as God wills it. If not, it would mean breaking the contract with the subsequent consequent punishment in Hell. In that context, whatever you do, you do in the name of God, and there is no special need to do anything just for sake of humanity, using only your brain but not blindly following what is written in the holy book. As a result, it doesn't make you a morally perfect being, but only those who patiently obey the divine rules in order to receive the reward at the end.

In fact, the post independence Indian political and bureaucratic rulers had succeeded in enshrining the cult of violence as a semi-statutory means of grievance redressal. They allowed the genuine aspirations of the people to be trampled and ignored and subsequently handling the violent venting of the accumulated frustration as a law and order problem. The state governments and the Union ministry of internal affairs had perfected the battle order of deputing police and paramilitary forces to fighting the violent segment of the people, who were, at the first instance, were allowed to choose violent means to express their genuine and perceived grievances over peaceful constitutional means. Somewhere some vested interests in the political and bureaucratic edifices of the country worked assiduously to bury the concepts of constitutional grievance redressing mechanics and promoted the cult of violence. They blindly followed the British attitude in dealing with the post-independent Indians who had assumedly given themselves an elaborate constitution and several layers of legal guarantees. The politicians and bureaucrats simply looted the public exchequer in the name of maintaining law and order. They were neither interested nor capable of addressing the grievances of the people.

However, I have a stronger hunch that the greatest part of the important biomedical research waiting to be done is in the class of basic science. There is an abundance of interesting fact relating to all our major diseases, and more items of information are coming in steadily from all quarters in biology. The new mass of knowledge is still formless, in complete, lacking the essential threads of connection, displaying misleading signals at every turn, riddled with blind alleys. There are fascinating ideas all over the place, irresistible experiments beyond numbering, all sorts of new ways into the maze of problems. But every next move is unpredictable, every outcome uncertain. It is a puzzling time, but a very good time. I do not know how you lay out orderly plans for this kind of activity, but I suppose you could find out by looking through the disorderly records of the past hundred years. Somehow, the atmosphere has to be set so that a disquieting sense of being wrong is the normal attitude of the investigators. It has to be taken for granted that the only way in is by riding the unencumbered human imagination, with the special rigor required for recognizing that something can be highly improbable, maybe almost impossible, and at the same time true. Locally, a good way to tell how the work is going is to listen in the corridors. If you hear the word, "Impossible!" spoken as an expletive, followed by laughter, you will know that someone's orderly research plan is coming along nicely.

He felt as if he'd been connected to something he didn't understand, plugged into a universe too vast to grasp. Now he was the one who was scared. "Rex, is it true what Geith says? That we're all guilty of using you?" She was distraught. He could heat the rasping wild undertone in her voice. "That we're all following orders blindly and not asking questions?" Rex felt his world beginning to unravel. If he let Ahsoka go too far down that path—no, if he let himself go down that path, then he wouldn't be able to do the job, and if he didn't do this job, then he had no idea what his life was about. If he let that doubt take hold, he would never be able to deal with Skywalker again, or be able to lead his men. And he had to lead them because they depended on him. His whole existence depended on believing in what he was doing. The little nagging voice that he tried to ignore was actually being more constructive this time. Don't even think about it, the voice said. Because you can't change a thing. So what if it's true? Where are you going to go? What else could you do? And what would happen to your men? Some things were so overwhelming and beyond your control that simply noticing they were there would destroy you. Rex decided he could shut it out. He could shut out anything if he put his mind to it. "I don't know," he said at last. "You said orders were there for a reason. That they kept us alive." "That's true." "Jedi have orders as well. Like no attachments. And... well, you've seen Callista and Geith. Master Altis lets all his Jedi marry if they want. But they've not fallen to the dark side, so what's really true?" The best Rex could do was help her live with uncertainty. He couldn't tell her what was true. And the fact that the Seps were trying to kill them—that was true. Did the rest matter? Pull one brick out of the wall, and the whole edifice comes crashing down. For any of us. "Remember how I said that you don't always have the bigger picture, that you get your orders because someone higher up the chain of command has information that you don't, so they don't necessarily make sense? Maybe your orders are like that." It wasn't a lie. It might not of been what Rex actually wanted to say—I don't understand what's happening, I don't like what's happening, something's wrong—but if he said that, then he was adrift, too, and that didn't help anybody stay alive.

Historically, as unjust laws have brought death, oppression, and injustice, far too many Christians have acquiesced to a patriotic doctrine of unquestioning allegiance to law and order. I raise this point in part because it is so easy to forget that if Mary and Joseph had blindly followed the law, Jesus would have been executed at birth—as would have Moses. Jesus embodied God’s heart for restoration. Jesus came to save, redeem, and restore those who are separated from God and their community because of their sin. But Jesus also came to remove the stones of judgment from the hands of religious people who impede the path of restoration for those who have stumbled along the way.

Of course, most of us, in the service of sanity, don’t fixate on the end. We go about the world focused on worldly concerns. We accept the inevitable and direct our energies to other things. Yet the recognition that our time is finite is always with us, helping to shape the choices we make, the challenges we accept, the paths we follow. As cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker maintained, we are under a constant existential tension, pulled toward the sky by a consciousness that can soar to the heights of Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Einstein but tethered to earth by a physical form that will decay to dust. “Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.”2 According to Becker, we are impelled by such awareness to deny death the capacity to erase us. Some soothe the existential yearning through commitment to family, a team, a movement, a religion, a nation—constructs that will outlast the individual’s allotted time on earth. Others leave behind creative expressions, artifacts that extend the duration of their presence symbolically. “We fly to Beauty,” said Emerson, “as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.”3 Others still seek to vanquish death by winning or conquering, as if stature, power, and wealth command an immunity unavailable to the common mortal. Across the millennia, one consequence has been a widespread fascination with all things, real or imagined, that touch on the timeless. From prophesies of an afterlife, to teachings of reincarnation, to entreaties of the windswept mandala, we have developed strategies to contend with knowledge of our impermanence and, often with hope, sometimes with resignation, to gesture toward eternity. What’s new in our age is the remarkable power of science to tell a lucid story not only of the past, back to the big bang, but also of the future. Eternity itself may forever lie beyond the reach of our equations, but our analyses have already revealed that the universe we have come to know is transitory. From planets to stars, solar systems to galaxies, black holes to swirling nebulae, nothing is everlasting. Indeed, as far as we can tell, not only is each individual life finite, but so too is life itself. Planet earth, which Carl Sagan described as a “mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam,” is an evanescent bloom in an exquisite cosmos that will ultimately be barren. Motes of dust, nearby or distant, dance on sunbeams for merely a moment. Still, here on earth we have punctuated our moment with astonishing feats of insight, creativity, and ingenuity as each generation has built on the achievements of those who have gone before, seeking clarity on how it all came to be, pursuing coherence in where it is all going, and longing for an answer to why it all matters. Such is the story of this book.

At the end of the long corridor, he opened another door and we stepped out into a huge kitchen filled with bustling staff who were refilling champagne glasses and making up more of the fancy bite-sized bits of food. Darius skirted the madness and I followed him, careful not to get in anyone’s way. He approached a woman who was working on a tray of creamy puff things and leaned close to ask her something. She instantly stopped what she was doing and headed away with a bow. Darius beckoned for me to follow him and I gritted my teeth as I did, wondering why I’d even come down here with him. The drink was making my head swimmy and apparently it was affecting my judgement too. He led me through a door to a darkened room with a few soft chairs by the far window and a small table in the centre of the space. Darius headed for the chairs but I ignored him, taking a perch on the table instead. “Do you ever do as you’re told?” he asked me, noticing the fact that I’d stopped following him. “Nope. Do you ever stop telling people what to do?” I asked. “I think I might just miss your smart mouth when you fail The Reckoning,” he muttered. I didn’t validate that with a response. He removed his black jacket and I eyed his fitted white shit appreciatively before pulling my gaze away. I did not need to fall under the spell of Darius Acrux’s stupidly hot appearance. Darius tossed his jacket down on the closest chair and moved to stand beside me. I could feel his eyes on me but I gave my attention to the room, studying portraits of old men in stuffy clothes and dragons soaring across the sky. Their choice in decor was boringly repetitive. The door opened and the kitchen maid came in carrying two plates with subs for us. I smiled at her as I accepted mine. “Thanks,” I said and she stared at me like I’d just slapped her before heading out of the room. “What was that about?” I asked before taking a bite of my sandwich. Holy hell that's good. “Serving jobs are generally taken by Fae with negligible amounts of magic,” Darius said as I ate like a woman possessed. “Thanking them for their work is kind of like the sun thanking a daisy for blooming. Just having a position in our household is beyond what they expect in life.” I paused, my food suddenly tasting like soot in my mouth. Of course that was how they viewed people with less than them. They were the elite, top of the pecking order, why would they waste time thanking those beneath them? If we’d met in the mortal world he never would have looked at me at all... and I’d have robbed him blind while he pretended not to notice my existence. I ate the last few bites of my food in silence and put the plate down beside me as soon as I was done. “I’d like to go back to the party now,” I said coldly. Darius eyed me over his own sandwich which he’d barely touched. “Because I don’t thank servants for doing their jobs?” he asked with barely concealed ridicule. “Because you’re boringly predictable just like everyone else here. You’re all more concerned about what everybody else thinks and sees than you are about enjoying life. What difference does it make if someone’s the most powerful Fae in the room or the least? I’d sooner have the time of my life with a powerless nobody than stand about posturing with a guy who doesn’t even know how to have fun.” I shrugged and got to my feet, intending to make my own way back to the ballroom but Darius moved forward a step, boxing me against the table as he placed his sandwich down. (Tory)

Society is against the heart, because the heart lives through love. And love cannot be controlled and conditioned. The heart is basically rebellious. The heart always lives in the moment. It never repeats the old. The heart always responds to the present moment. This is why society is against the heart. Society disciplines the head, because the head functionslike a machine. Machines are never rebellious. They simply follow orders. They are obedient. Hence the state, the church and the establishment, the status quo, are interested in the head. Our heart is the door to allow existence to guide us – instead of being directed by our own ideas, attitudes and preconceived expectations of how life should be. The heart creates inconvenience for society and for the established order. The heart is spontaneous and never repeats the old. The head lives in the past, which is why the head is traditional and conventional.  The heart relates to unconditional love and acceptance both for ourselves and for other people.  The heart relates to qualities such as empathy, joy, acceptance, trust, intuition, understanding, compassion, playfulness, healing, friendship, sincerity and a sense of oneness in love. Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, withthe meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner emptiness is experienced by others and is expressed on the outside as love. This love is not addressed to a specific person; it is a presence that surrounds a person like a fragrance. Love is perfect as it is. Love is enough unto itself. Love has to be understood. Love is the flight of your consciousness to higher realms beyond the body. Love is the fragrance of a rising consciousness. Love is like the fragrance of a flower. The moment you are overflowing with joy, a longing arises to share it. This sharing is love. Love is not something that you can get from somebody else, who has not attained to a state of joy. Everybody is asking to be loved, and pretending to love. You cannot love, because you don't know what consciousness is. You don't know the truth; you don't know the experience of the divine.  You don't know what love is, because you have not yet gone deeper in your consciousness. In this ignorance and blindness love does not grow. If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. Love is the defeat of all imposed rules and conditions. hence there is  a struggle between the individual who follows his heart and the collective who follows the imposed order. The individual who follows his heart has to be aware of this struggle, because he is moving towards the freedom of being himself. Being himself means that he is not going to be ruled by the collective, by the crowd. It means that now he will live according to his own heart, according to his own light. When he becomes independent, he will start feeling that he is  becoming one with the whole, one with the universal.  It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that we are not separated from life. We begin to understand that we are not small separate islands in a great ocean, but that life is one and that we all are small parts of the Whole. We begin to understand what is really important and meaningful in life. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that life is about sharing, rather than hoarding. We begin to understand that life is about giving, rather than taking.

As one engineering executive in an industry where failure rates cannot exceed 0.0005 percent told us, “Risk is for weekends.” But consistently following procedures and minimizing risk doesn’t mean blindly following orders. Quite the opposite. In these high-stakes, low-margin-for-error scenarios, Courageous Cultures are essential. As the stakes increase, the courage to raise issues before they become critical, to identify and solve defects, and to improve processes become even more important.

The monks had educated him far beyond the usual scope of the common foot soldier, now virtually obsolete in a country without war. They’d taught him to think rather than to blindly follow orders,

Jesus is shown healing the blind in Mark 8:22-26. This episode is especially remarkable in that it has Jesus employ common magical healing techniques ("Here's mud in your eye!"), something Matthew and Luke did not care for and so omitted. Equally notable is the fact that the healed man does not recover his sight all at once. Jesus has to try again before sight is fully restored. Some critics have understood this detail as symbolic of the two stages of the awakening of the disciples' faith. They see the truth clearly enough to heed Jesus' call to follow, and yet they have no understanding of his divine fate till the end. Their spiritual blindness, then, would have cleared up in two stages. If we accept this interpretation, we are pretty much saying Mark created the detail. [...] My guess is that it is a Markan creation, drawing upon magical techniques that were commonenough knowledge in order to make it seem authentic. He thought no more of having Jesus have to try again than he did of having him repent in baptism. His Christology was not "high" enough for any of this to be an embarrassment [...] Matthew would never have created such a story, true, but Mark saw nothing wrong with it.

Alexander is extremely forthright about the consequences of this fragmentation: "In any organized object, extreme compartmentalization and the dissociation of internal elements are the first signs of coming destruction. In a society, dissociation is anarchy. In a person, dissociation is the mark of schizophrenia and impending suicide." As Alexander clearly implies, human beings do not naturally comply with this highly compartmentalized modus operandi. Our connections, among ourselves and with the surrounding environment, do not follow this type of conceptual order and simplicity. We are ambiguous, complex, and idiosyncratic. "The reality of today's social structure is thick with overlap-the systems of friends and acquaintances form a semilattice, not a tree," state Alexander on the convergent nature of social groups. He is convinced that the reductionist conception of urban spaces, typical of a tree organization, blinds our judgment of the city and limits the problem-solving abilities of many planners and system analysts.

MT: These texts are at one and the same time very beautiful and obscure; they need to be explicated, clarified. “What is hidden will be revealed.” Why must Revelation be hidden? RG: It's not that it must be hidden, actually it's not hidden at all. It's mankind that is blind. We're inside the closure of representation, everyone is in the fishbowl of his or her culture. In other words, mankind doesn't see what I was saying earlier, the principle of illusion that governs our viewpoint. Even after the Revelation, we still don't understand. MT: Does that mean that things are going to emerge gradually, but that at first they're incomprehensible? RG: They seem incomprehensible because mankind lives under the sign of Satan, lives a lie and lives in fear of the lie, in fear of liars. The reversal performed by the Passion has yet to occur. MT: Insofar as the Church itself has been mistaken for two thousand years and has been practicing a sacrificial reading of the Passion of the Christ, that reading is a way of hiding Revelation. RG: I'm not saying that the Church is mistaken. The reading that I'm proposing is in line with all the great dogmas, but it endows them with an anthropological underpinning that had gone unnoticed. MT: Why not just clean up our bad habits by sweeping them away once and for all in the year zero, making way for an era of love and infinite peace? RG: Because the world wouldn't have been able to take it! Since the sacrificial principle is the fundamental principle of the human order—up to a certain point human beings need to pour out their violence and tensions onto scapegoats—destroying it all at once is impossible. That's why Christianity is made in such a way as to allow for transitions. This is no doubt one of the reasons why it is at once so far from and so close to myth, and always susceptible to being interpreted a bit mythically. When Nietzsche says that Christianity is impossible, that it can only lead to absurdities, to outrageous, insane things, it can be said that he's superficially right, even if ultimately he's wrong. You can't get rid of the sacrificial principle by just flicking it away as if it were a piece of dust. History isn't finished. Every day very interesting things, changes in outlook, are happening right before our eyes. In the United States and everywhere, a lot of current cultural phenomena can be unified by describing them as the discovery of new victims, or rather as their concrete rehabilitation, for in truth we've known about them for a long time: women, children, the elderly, the insane, the physically and mentally handicapped, and so forth. For example, the question of abortion, which has great importance in American debates, is no longer formulated except in the following terms: “Who is the real victim? Is it the child or is it the mother?” You can no longer defend a given position, or indeed any of them, except by making it into a contribution to the anti-victimary crusade. MT

Are things moral simply because God says so? Or does God give certain orders because they are inherently moral? This is the question at the core of Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, a problem that lies at the heart of religious debates about the divinity of moral authority (4). If morality exists separate from God's will, there is no reason to rely on God for moral behavior; one could have moral standards independently without divine feedback. On the other hand, if God creates morality simply by saying whether something is right or wrong, then that’s not really morality; it’s arbitrariness. Morality would become nothing more than the whimsy of a divine being blindly followed by humans.

The only way to stay informed is with open discussion. At no point is a man a hater of a country or belief simply because he see’s some things that may need further improvement. It shows, If anything, a person being able to see beyond what people or government wants one to see, instead of sprouting slogans or walking blindly into the eye of death without clarified reason. Questioning something is always the first step to awareness not sitting by and being a cow waiting for the directive to come down from up high and simply following orders. That was the excuse many Nazis had, "I just followed orders." ~ From “The Directive Of Writing” © 2015

Panhandle's residence was situated in a remote part of the country, and at this moment I have no clear recollection of the complicated journey, with its many changes at little-known junctions, which I had to make in order to find my friend. The residence stood in the midst of elevated woodlands, and was well hidden by the trees. An immense sky-sign, standing out high above all other objects and plainly visible to the traveller from whatever side he made his approach, had been erected on the roof. The sky-sign carried the legend "No Psychologists!" It turned with the wind, gyrating continually, and when darkness fell the letters were outlined in electric lamps. Only a blind man could miss the warning. This legend was repeated over the main entrance to the grounds, with the addition of the word "Beware!" I thought of mantraps and ferocious dogs, and for some minutes I stood before the gates, wondering if it would be safe for me to enter. At last, remembering how several friends had assured me that I was "no psychologist," I concluded that little harm awaited me, plucked up my courage, and boldly advanced. Beyond the gates I found the warning again repeated with a more emphatic truculence and a finer particularity. At intervals along the drive I saw notice-boards projecting from the barberries and the laurels, each with some new version of the original theme. "Death to the Psychology of Religion" were the words inscribed on one. The next was even more precise in its application, and ran as follows:— "Inquisitive psychologists take notice! Panhandle has a gun, And will not hesitate to shoot." Somewhat shaken I approached the front door and was startled to see a long, glittering thing suddenly thrust through an open window in the upper storey; and the man behind the weapon was unquestionably Panhandle himself. "Can it be," I said aloud, "that Panhandle has taken me for an inquisitive psychologist?" "Advance," cried my host, who had a keen ear for such undertones. "Advance and fear nothing." A moment later he grasped me warmly by the hand, "Welcome, dearest of friends," he was saying. "You have arrived at an opportune moment. The house is full of guests who are longing to meet you." "But, Panhandle," I expostulated as we stood on the doorstep, "I understood we were to be alone. I have come for one purpose only, that you might explain your familiarity with—with those people." I used this expression, rather than one more explicit, because the footman was still present, knowing from long experience how dangerous it is to speak plainly about metaphysical realities in the hearing of the proletariat. "Those very people are now awaiting you," said Panhandle, as he drew me into the library. "I will be quite frank with you at once. This house is haunted; and if on consideration you find your nerves unequal to an encounter with ghosts, you had better go back at once, for there is no telling how soon the apparitions will begin.

It is extremely odd that in seeking to comprehend the revelation, human beings divinize their own understanding thereof. A serious contradiction arises from this fact. God conveyed His (infinite) knowledge in a language, and form, that could be understood by humanity. As if He were saying, “I give my knowledge to you based on the level of your own understanding,” that is, delineated by the context of our own lives. Whereas human beings generally seek to present their own understanding as if it were Divine knowledge which—although incomprehensible, or even nonsensical—must be obeyed by others. The products of human interpretation are thus transformed into religious obligations, which must be accepted and followed blindly, with no opportunity for rational exploration or understanding. In fact, I find it remarkable that God “humanizes” His knowledge, while humans divinize theirs, in order to avoid subjecting their concepts to the principles that govern knowledge and criticism, while compelling us to accept anything they choose to ram down our throats, without giving us a chance to critically examine, question or reject their propositions. I believe we must oppose this all too human error, which seeks to divinize human understanding, and present it as the will of God. But how can we overcome this (egotistical) delusion?

Human conversation is something I have studied diligently, since it makes no sense at all to me unless it follows the comfortable path of cliché, which it does ninety-nine percent of the time. So in order to fit in, I have learned the formulas of small talk, and I must follow them or I am lost in a jungle of feelings and impulses and notions that I do not share. I am blind to nuance. But I would have had to be deaf and dumb as well not to realize that Jackie was paying me a compliment, and I groped for an appropriate response, only managing to say, “Oh, thank you,” which sounded pretty feeble, even to me.

When He Needs Freedom from Destructive Behavior Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. EPHESIANS 6:10-11 IT’S DIFFICULT FOR A WIFE to see her husband exhibit any kind of destructive behavior. In watching him doing something repeatedly that hurts his health or jeopardizes their family, she sees her future going over a cliff. There can be such terrible consequences for his behavior that it could ruin them financially, as well as destroy him physically or mentally. Whether it is drinking alcohol, taking drugs, gambling, smoking, reckless eating habits, or whatever else she observes her husband doing that could destroy him or endanger her or their children, it can be so heartbreaking to her that she cannot live with it. Every woman has to decide what she can and cannot tolerate. Life is hard enough without your husband finding ways to make it worse. And she must decide how much she can allow her children to witness before it seriously affects them too. You may not see behavior as seriously destructive as that in your husband, but perhaps he is taking unnecessary chances with his safety, such as driving too fast, or riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or being careless with dangerous machinery or equipment, or refusing to see a doctor when he should, or not following the doctor’s orders and thereby jeopardizing his health. There is only so much you can say or do to try to motivate your husband to stop destructive behavior if he is intent on doing it. But God can do miracles when you fervently pray to Him about it. He hears your prayers, and He wants your husband to be free as much as you do. Your prayers can help your husband open his eyes to see the truth. Your prayers can help him to understand how to put on the whole armor of God so he can stand against these plans of the enemy for his destruction. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would set my husband free from any destructive behavior he has acquired. Wake him up to the folly of his ways and show him when he is being foolish. Break the chains that bind him and open his blind eyes. Strengthen him where his weakness controls him. Enable him to see when the enemy has erected a stronghold in his life. Help him to understand how his behavior affects me and our children, as well as other family members, coworkers, and friends. Tell me what I can do to help make this situation better. I know I cannot change him, and I am unable to make anything happen. Only You can open his eyes, deliver him, and set him free from destructive behavior. I know foolish actions are not Your will for his life, and there is a big price to pay for everything that is not Your will. I pray that neither I nor my children will have to pay any price for his careless behavior. Whatever the reason he appears to have little regard for me, our children, or himself by continuing any reckless behavior, I pray You would deliver him from it completely. You are greater and more powerful than whatever draws him away from Your best. I trust You to set him free to be all You made him to be. In Jesus’ name I pray.

The empty dishes on the kitchen table. A glass over the corner of a napkin. The liquid at its bottom, vibrating at the rhythm of my drumming. There it was, in all its splendour: Reality. All the mysteries and any possible revelation were in that domestic glass, sleeping under a veil. Every possible adventure, already taking place at the point where a gaze encounters an object, or a mind a thought. I looked at the shadow-lines that the table lamp cast on the napkin and followed their trajectory beyond their mark. I looked at the reflections on the glass and slid the back of my hand against its cold body. I wondered if it might feel me, the same as I felt it. If it was staring at me and receiving as silent an answer as the one I got from it. Maybe I was doing it wrong. I should have proceeded with order: cataloguing what I could see and all its qualities, while looking for a gap where my reason could break in. Or maybe I should have done the opposite: becoming pure awareness, staring at my surroundings devoid of any intentions, with the clear eye of a hanging mirror. The cigarette embers licked my fingers and I put it out in the ashtray. I had done that countless times already: looking and looking and finding nothing else than what I knew. I was surrounded by a library, encased within each speck of space and time, and yet I was blind to its words. I felt tired. The glass was still there. I closed my eyes to look for the image of it that I had impressed in my memory. I found it. I lost it. I found it again, and soon it faded. I stretched my legs under the table and I rested my head on the palm of my hands. The glass was still there in my memory. I found it. I lost it. I looked again.

respect for the rules, except when following those rules means disregarding or ignoring or remaining blind to an even higher moral principle

The Buddha told his disciples the following fable: “Once upon a time, a clever king invited several people blind from birth to visit the palace. He brought out an elephant and asked them to touch it and then describe what the elephant was like. The blind man who rubbed its legs said that the elephant was like the pillars of a house. The man who stroked its tail said the elephant was like a feather duster. The person who touched its ears said it was like a winnowing basket, and the man who touched its stomach said it was like a round barrel. The person who rubbed its head said the elephant was like a large earthenware jar, and the person who touched its tusk said the elephant was like a stick. When they sat down to discuss what the elephant was like, no one could agree with anyone else, and a very heated argument arose. “Bhikkhus, what you see and hear comprises only a small part of reality. If you take it to be the whole of reality, you will end up having a distorted picture. A person on the path must keep a humble, open heart, acknowledging that his understanding is incomplete. We should devote constant effort to study more deeply in order to make progress on the path. A follower of the Way must remain open-minded, understanding that attachment to present views as if they were absolute truth will only prevent us from realizing the truth. Humility and open-mindedness are the two conditions necessary for making progress on the path.

He’d resolved to be better at blindly following orders in his new life, noting that deviating from the allowed parameters had always been what had got him into trouble in the past.

Agambenquotes from Hegel’s Aesthetics: “what is at issue […] is the right of the wide awake consciousness, the justification of what the man has self-consciously willed and knowingly done, as contrasted with what he was fated by the gods to do and actually did unconsciously,” and declares that “[n]othing is further from Auschwitz than this model” (2002: 96 & 97). Not only do innocence and guilt becomes unbridgeable, but their relation is based on a de facto inversion: the camp deportee “feels innocent precisely for that which the tragic hero feels guilty, and guilty exactly where the tragic hero feels innocent” (2002: 97). Agamben’s context is that of Primo Levi’s “grey zone,” and the rationale of Befehlnotstand, the principle of blind obedience, or the “‘state of compulsion to follow an order’” (2002: 97).

Wittgenstein aimed to achieve complete clarity in order that philosophical problems would completely disappear. To do this he sought to draw the boundaries between sense and nonsense, to apply a pragmatic criterion of meaning in order to judge the sensibility of philosophical utterances, and spoke strongly against metaphysical statements. Therefore, we cannot avoid concluding that Wittgenstein held that there are norms or standards for use and misuse of language; he aimed to purify legitimate usages and to decree what is legitimate and what is not. Linguistic use would guide him to the limits of the sayable. However, on the other hand, Wittgenstein took a very non-revolutionary attitude towards his philosophizing. He determined to leave language just as it is, for ordinary language leaves nothing to explain, already possesses perfect order, and is adequate for our needs. Hence he definitely renounced the goal of reforming language. Moreover, such reform would be impossible, since linguistic situations are not completely bounded by rules, and with the countless different kinds of use of language and their fluidity, no universal norms could be found. Thus there is no specific standard for linguistic use, and everyone is left to follow his own language games-blindly. Therefore, we cannot avoid concluding that Wittgenstein denied any definite guide for the limits of the sayable. In light of the two previous paragraphs we can understand the failure of Wittgenstein's philosophy; it has created its own antinomy or self-vitiation. Wittgenstein was simultaneously being a rationalist and an irrationalist, an absolutist and relativist; he set out to do prescription, but limited himself to description. Linguistic use was to be guided by rules in order to achieve clarity; yet usage was completely open-ended and immune to permanent standards. He promoted a new method for philosophy, but denied that philosophy had any one method; his position led him both to castigate previous philosophies and to endorse them as one practice or custom among many. This dialectic in his thought, along with his inherent (post-Kantian idealistic) skepticism, and in the long run the arbitrariness with which his epistemology ends up, all point out his failure to lay the disquieting questions of the theory of knowledge to rest.

She had taken up astrology because she found that people who wouldn't take advice from a wise and informed friend will blindly follow the orders of the planets - which, by all reports, are fairly remote and aloof.

Our cultural conditioning is so ingrained in us that we often see these customs and taboos as inherent to the fabric of the cosmos. We spiritualize them. Legalize them. And when someone else doesn't follow them, it can feel to us like an attack on our very personhood. This kind of cultural blindness affects how we order creation.

Awareness is what separates warriors from soldiers or fighters. Soldiers follow orders and fight. Warriors don’t need orders because they know what needs to be done. Nor do warriors fight for petty reasons; their job is to maintain and protect the tribe. Once you lose sight of what is going on, you slip into either soldier or fighter mode. That’s not good. A soldier blindly follows orders, even if it means getting killed. If the people giving the orders have gone bad, the amount of damage can be unbelievable (look at Nazi Germany). A fighter, on the other hand, is like a rabid dog; he’s hurt and fucked up and wants to share the wealth. Toe tags are not fashionable jewelry, but being a fighter or soldier usually leads to them. Un- fortunately, our culture generally gives you a choice only of being a fighter or a soldier. This book tells you what you need to know to be a warrior.

At one point, Pegg tripped on a rock and fell. “Ouch! My knees!” He yelled in pain. “Ouch! My knees!” The crowd went along with him. “No, don’t repeat that!” Pegg asked. “No! Don’t repeat that!” The crowd blindly followed his voice. “What a bunch of stupid Piglins,” Pegg mumbled. “Wait a minute; we are heading to the wrong place. The City Hall is to the other side!” Pegg yelled. “The City Hall is to the other side!” The crowd chanted ignoring his orders and continuing in the wrong direction. “No, wait! Stop!” Pegg ordered. “No, wait! Stop!” The crowd simply repeated everything but didn’t actually pay attention to what Pegg was saying. “This is a mess!” Pegg cursed at the crowd. “This is a mess!” They shouted.

never swore an oath. I hope you’ll forgive me if I fail to follow orders to the letter to make robots to kill people. And I hope you’ll forgive Kim if she refuses to make some horrible bacteria to kill people on an even grander scale. I can’t blindly follow rulers who order such things. I’m only sad that it’s taken this upheaval in my life for me to look beyond my simple existence to realize people like that were in charge of us all.

As an adult, you have enough knowledge and life experience to take good care of yourself, and you don’t need to blindly follow childhood rules any longer in order to keep yourself safe.

Corporate culture and the selection of people—and those are related. For a company at Amazon’s scale to continue to invent and change, to build new things, it needs to have a culture that supports a willingness to experiment, a willingness to fail. I think it is very helpful to have a customer-obsessed culture. There are other business strategies that work. You can be competitor-obsessed, and that leads to business strategies like close following. Close-following strategies can be good for businesses because you don’t have to go down as many blind alleys and you get to let your competitors do the pioneering—and then, when something works, you can jump on it. But it doesn’t lead to as much entrepreneurialism. A pioneering culture, one that actually enjoys and is excited by experimentation, a culture that rewards experimentation even as it embraces the fact that it is going to lead to failure—that is very important for larger companies in order to be entrepreneurial. And a long-term orientation is a key part of that. If everything has to work this quarter, then you’re by definition not going to be doing very much experimentation.