Characterize People By Their Actions Quotes

Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave,'' he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests.

People who are not subject to anxious overthinking have mastered a particular attitude to life that’s characterized by flexibility, focus, resilience, and beneficial action. Put your awareness

Middlemarch is a novel that is diminished by being put on the screen. It can't help but be, because so much of what we enjoy in Middlemarch is the interplay between what the characters do and what we know about them because of the telling voice. It's less of a problem for the cinema when it deals with novels that are purely concerned with action and what people do. I haven't thought this through, and I'm just trying it now to see what it sounds like. But maybe it would be less a problem with novels that are told in the first person. The interesting thing to me about Middlemarch, and Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and several other great novels, is precisely this omniscient, as we call it, third person, which naive readers mistake for the author. It isn't George Eliot who is saying this; it's a voice that George Eliot adopts to tell this story. There can be something very interesting in a novel like Bleak House, which was also done very well on the television by the same adapter, Andrew Davis. Now, Bleak House is told in two voices, as you remember. One is the somewhat trying Esther Summerson, who is a paradigm of every kind of virtue, and the other is a different sort of voice entirely, a voice that tells the story in the present tense, which was unusual for the time, a voice that doesn't seem to have a main character attached to it. But I think that Dickens is playing a very subtle game here. I've noticed a couple of things about that second narration that make me wonder whether it isn't Esther herself writing the other bits of it. For instance, at the very beginning, she says, "When I come to write my portion of these pages . . ." So she knows that there is another narrative going on, but nobody else does. Nobody else refers to it. The second thing is that she is the only character who never appears in those passages of present-tense narration. The other characters do. She doesn't. Why would that be? There's one point very near the end of the book where she almost does. Inspector Bucket is coming into the house to collect Esther to go and look for Lady Dedlock, who's run away, and we hear that Esther is just coming -- but no, she's turned back and brought her cloak, so we don't quite see her. It's as if she's teasing us and saying, "You're going to see me; no, you're not." Now, that's Dickens, at the height of his powers, playing around -- in ways that we would now call, I don't know, postmodern, ironic, self-referential, or something -- with the whole notion of narration, characterization, and so on. Yet, it doesn't matter. Those things are there for us to notice and to enjoy and to relish, if we have the taste for that sort of thing. But the events of Bleak House are so thrilling, so perplexing, so exciting that a mere recital of the events themselves is enough to carry a whole television adaptation, a whole play, a whole story. It's so much better with Dickens's narrative playfulness there, but it's pretty good without them.

As a moral matter, individuals must be free to make their own decisions and to succeed or fail according to their own choices. As a practical matter, as Frum points out, when we shield people from the consequences of their actions, we get a society characterized not by thrift, sobriety, diligence, self-reliance, and prudence but by profligacy, intemperance, indolence, dependency, and indifference to consequences.

1)    The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2)    At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3)    He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4)    He is verbally abusive. 5)    He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6)    He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7)    He has battered in prior relationships. 8)    He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9)    He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10)   His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11)   There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12)   He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13)   He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14)   He refuses to accept rejection. 15)   He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16)   He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17)   He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18)   He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19)   He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship. 20)   He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21)   He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22)   He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23)   He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24)   He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25)   He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26)   He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27)   Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28)   He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29)   He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30)   His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

Ronnie is in the living room now. He has satisfied his computer addiction and is shifting through channels. We have something like four hundred or so choices, but he rarely finds anything he thinks he’ll enjoy. It’s difficult to watch television with him because, like someone with attention deficit disorder, he’ll abruptly flip the channel to something else, calling what he started to watch ‘crap’ or ‘boring’. Between him and Kelly, the word ‘boring’ seems to characterize ninety percent of life. I think they expect to wake up and go to sleep to fireworks. They’re both always looking for distractions, action, excitement and noise. I know what they believe: stillness is dangerous. Silence encourages people to start getting philosophical which always leads to being maudlin and depressing. Ugh. Usually

Consciousness is the fabric of human reality. Consciousness allows humankind to engage in reason, make sense out of things, apply logic, verify facts, and adjust our actions based upon deliberate decision-making and hierological beliefs. We possess the ability to change our perspective, modify how we think, and alter our emotional responses. People can assimilate their thoughts and align their goals premised upon guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community or personal ideology based upon practical skills, wisdom, virtue, goodness, and community goodwill. Humans exhibit a creative spark that enables them to employ both their hunches and rational thoughts to adjust to changing situations. We can make logical, aesthetic, moral, and ethical judgments. The ability to modify their thinking patterns empowers all humans to alter their functional reality. By integrating our consciousness around our purpose in life, we can each become congruent in our daily thoughts and deeds.

Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “degrowth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . .”3 Obama added, “. . . So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”4 Degrowthers define their agenda as follows: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.”5 It “is an essential economic strategy to pursue in overdeveloped countries like the United States—for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and yes, even of the sick, stressed, and overweight ‘consumer’ populations of overdeveloped countries.”6 For its proponents and adherents, degrowth has quickly developed into a pseudo-religion and public-policy obsession. In fact, the degrowthers insist their ideology reaches far beyond the environment or even its odium for capitalism and is an all-encompassing lifestyle and governing philosophy. Some of its leading advocates argue that “Degrowth is not just an economic concept. We shall show that it is a frame constituted by a large array of concerns, goals, strategies and actions. As a result, degrowth has now become a confluence point where streams of critical ideas and political action converge.”7 Degrowth is “an interpretative frame for a social movement, understood as the mechanism through which actors engage in a collective action.”8 The degrowthers seek to eliminate carbon sources of energy and redistribute wealth according to terms they consider equitable. They reject the traditional economic reality that acknowledges growth as improving living conditions generally but especially for the impoverished. They embrace the notions of “less competition, large scale redistribution, sharing and reduction of excessive incomes and wealth.”9 Degrowthers want to engage in polices that will set “a maximum income, or maximum wealth, to weaken envy as a motor of consumerism, and opening borders (“no-border”) to reduce means to keep inequality between rich and poor countries.”10 And they demand reparations by supporting a “concept of ecological debt, or the demand that the Global North pays for past and present colonial exploitation in the Global South.”11

The 120 social scientists and investigators hired by the Kerner Commission, working under the guidance of Research Director Robert Shellow, provided a much more perceptive political analysis of the rebellions that the commission never published. In the concluding chapter of the analysis, “America on the Brink: White Racism and Black Rebellion,” the social scientists argued that racism pervaded all U.S. institutions and that blacks “feel it is legitimate and necessary to use violence against the social order. A truly revolutionary spirit has begun to take hold . . . an unwillingness to compromise or wait any longer, to risk death rather than have their people continue in a subordinate status.” Shellow and his team were subsequently fired, and their analysis was removed from the report.46 Powerful evidence supported the Shellow team’s view that many black people in Detroit saw the unrest as political action—that is, as a rebellion. In the Campbell-Schumann survey several months after the incident, 56 percent of the black respondents in Detroit characterized the incident as a “rebellion or revolution,” whereas only 19 percent characterized it as a “riot.”47 In

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is unhelpfully named, since it is not particularly closely related to the better known obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It does not tend to co-occur with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or even run in the same families. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder, in which the sufferer feels compelled to repeat particular thoughts or actions, such as checking or hand-washing. As an anxious condition, it belongs to the same family as depression and generalized anxiety disorder, and thus is related to high Neuroticism and responds to some extent to serotonergic antidepressant medications. Some people have even seen obsessive-compulsive disorder as a low Conscientiousness problem, since the affected individual cannot inhibit the checking or washing response in rather the same manner as the alcoholic cannot inhibit his desire to drink. Whether this is the right characterization or not, it is clear that OCPD is a very different type of problem.16 What, then, does OCPD entail? Psychiatrists define it as ‘a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness and efficiency, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts’.

The violence enacted on Julia’s mother and sister are part of a long history in which Black women were seen as both undesirable and sexually objectified. This is the illogic of white supremacy; it does not need intellectual continuity. The temptation is to say that this illogic “dehumanizes” its subject, though some historians argue that such a characterization is incorrect. Historian Walter Johnson aptly notes that the “language of ‘dehumanization’ is misleading because slavery depended upon the human capacities of enslaved people. It depended upon their reproduction. It depended upon their labor. And it depended upon their sentience. Enslaved people could be taught: their intelligence made them valuable. They could be manipulated: their desires could make them pliable. They could be terrorized: their fears could make them controllable. And they could be tortured: beaten, starved, raped, humiliated, degraded. It is these last that are conventionally understood to be the most ‘inhuman’ of slaveholders’ actions and those that most ‘dehumanized’ enslaved people. And yet these actions epitomize the failure of this set of terms to capture what was at stake in slaveholding violence: the extent to which slaveholders depended upon violated slaves to bear witness, to provide satisfaction, to provide a living, human register of slaveholders’ power.

THE SEVEN KEY CHARACTERIZATION VARIABLES Think of these as realms, as areas of potential character illumination. Here they are, in no particular order: Surface affectations and personality—What the world sees and perceives about a character, including quirks, ticks, habits, and visual presentation. Backstory—All that happened in the character’s life before the story begins that conspires to make him who he is now. Character arc—How the character learns lessons and grows (changes) over the course of the story, how she evolves and conquers her most confounding issues. Inner demons and conflicts—The nature of the issues that hold a character back and define his outlook, beliefs, decisions, and actions. Fear of meeting new people, for example, is a demon that definitely compromises one’s life experience. Worldview—An adopted belief system and moral compass; the manifested outcome of backstory and inner demons. Goals and motivations—What drives a character’s decisions and actions, and the belief that the benefits of those decisions and actions outweigh any costs or compromises. Decisions, actions, and behaviors—The ultimate decisions and actions that are the sum of all of the above. Everything about your characters depends on this final variable, and the degree to which the character’s decisions, actions, and behaviors have meaning and impact depends on how well you’ve manipulated the first six variables before, during, and after the moment of decision or action.

Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations? To pose that question is to answer it. We despise, ostracize and punish the addict because we don’t wish to see how much we resemble him. In his dark mirror our own features are unmistakable. We shudder at the recognition. This mirror is not for us, we say to the addict. You are different, and you don’t belong with us. Like the hardcore addict’s pursuit of drugs, much of our economic and cultural life caters to people’s craving to escape mental and emotional distress. In an apt phrase, Lewis Lapham, long-time publisher of Harper’s Magazine, derides “consumer markets selling promises of instant relief from the pain of thought, loneliness, doubt, experience, envy, and old age.” According to a Statistics Canada study, 31 per cent of working adults aged nineteen to sixty-four consider themselves workaholics, who attach excessive importance to their work and are “overdedicated and perhaps overwhelmed by their jobs.” “They have trouble sleeping, are more likely to be stressed out and unhealthy, and feel they don’t spend enough time with their families,” reports the Globe and Mail. Work doesn’t necessarily give them greater satisfaction, suggested Vishwanath Baba, a professor of Human Resources and Management at McMaster University. “These people turn to work to occupy their time and energy” — as compensation for what is lacking in their lives, much as the drug addict employs substances. At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only towards the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future — the two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the centre, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit, with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action- and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive and meaningless mind-whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction— and it serves the same purpose. “One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.” So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, emails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames and non-stop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.

But Jung did speak out against Hitler some years before he left the society. In 1936 he condemned the Fuehrer as a “raving berserker” and a man “possessed” who had set Germany on its “course toward perdition.”37 And a year earlier, in his lecture series at London’s Tavistock Clinic, Jung broke off his remarks to refer to his prophecy of 1918. “I saw it coming,” he told his fellow psychologists, “I said in 1918 that the ‘blond beast’ is stirring in its sleep and that something will happen in Germany. No psychologist then understood at all what I meant . . .” Commenting on the power of the archetypes to overrun conscious decision, Jung called them “the great decisive forces.”38 They “get you below the belt and not in your mind, your brain just counts for nothing, your sympathetic system is gripped.”39 Remarks like these led to accusations that Jung gave people a way of avoiding responsibility for their actions: they didn’t decide to become Nazis, the archetypes “made them do it.” Yet they are remarkably similar to what the philosopher Jean Gebser, who had firsthand experience of Nazism, believed was at work: the “magical structure of consciousness,” which Gebser characterized as a “vegetative intertwining of all living things,” and which requires a “sacrifice of consciousness” and “occurs in the state of trance, or when consciousness dissolves as a result of mass reactions, slogans, or ‘isms.’ ” Curiously, Gebser believed the “magical structure” was also responsible for synchronicities,40 and in an interview in 1938, Jung himself said that “Hitler’s power is not political; it is magic.”41

As their conversation turned philosophical, Oppenheimer stressed the word 'responsibility'. And when Morgan suggested he was using the word almost in a religious sense Oppenheimer agreed it was a 'secular devise for using a religious notion without attaching it to a transcendent being. I like to use the word 'ethical' here. I am more explicit about ethical questions now than ever before although these were very strong with me when I was working on the bomb. Now I don't know how to describe my life without using some word like responsibility to characterize it. A word that has to do with choice and action and the tension in which choices can be resolved. I'm not talking about knowledge but about being limited by what you can do. There is no meaningful responsibility without power. It may be only power over what you do yourself but increased knowledge, increased wealth... leisure are all increasing the domain in which responsibility is conceivable. After this soliloquy Morgan wrote "Oppenheimer turned his palms up, the long slender fingers including his listener in his conclusion 'You and I' he said 'Neither of us is rich but as far as responsibility goes both of us are in a position right now to alleviate the most awful agony in people at the starvation level.' This was only a different way of saying what he had learned from reading Proust forty years earlier in Corsica... that indifference to the sufferings one causes is the terrible and permanent form of cruelty. Far from being indifferent, Robert was acutely aware of the suffering he had caused others in his life and yet he would not allow himself to succumb to guilt. He would accept responsibility. He had never tried to deny his responsibility but since the security hearing he nevertheless no longer seemed to have the capacity or motivation to fight against the cruelty of indifference. and in that sense, Robby had been right- they achieved their goal, they killed him.

In the future, white supremacy will no longer need white people,” the artist Lorraine O’Grady said in 2018, a prognosis that seemed, at least on the surface, to counter what James Baldwin said fifty years ago, which is that “the white man’s sun has set.” Which is it then? What prediction will hold? As an Asian American, I felt emboldened by Baldwin but haunted and implicated by O’Grady. I heard the ring of truth in her comment, which gave me added urgency to finish this book. Whiteness has already recruited us to become their junior partners in genocidal wars; conscripted us to be antiblack and colorist; to work for, and even head, corporations that scythe off immigrant jobs like heads of wheat. Conscription is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort, unless we make an effort to choose otherwise. Unless we are read as Muslim or trans, Asian Americans are fortunate not to live under hard surveillance, but we live under a softer panopticon, so subtle that it’s internalized, in that we monitor ourselves, which characterizes our conditional existence. Even if we’ve been here for four generations, our status here remains conditional; belonging is always promised and just out of reach so that we behave, whether it’s the insatiable acquisition of material belongings or belonging as a peace of mind where we are absorbed into mainstream society. If the Asian American consciousness must be emancipated, we must free ourselves of our conditional existence. But what does that mean? Does that mean making ourselves suffer to keep the struggle alive? Does it mean simply being awake to our suffering? I can only answer that through the actions of others. As of now, I’m writing when history is being devoured by our digital archives so we never have to remember. The administration has plans to reopen a Japanese internment camp in Oklahoma to fill up with Latin American children. A small band of Japanese internment camp survivors protest this reopening every day. I used to idly wonder whatever happened to all the internment camp survivors. Why did they disappear? Why didn’t they ever speak out? At the demonstration, protester Tom Ikeda said, “We need to be the allies for vulnerable communities today that Japanese Americans didn’t have in 1942.” We were always here.

Karmic Cause and Effect It is very important to contemplate the connection between our mental states and our actions. Our karmic patterns are formed and sustained by the intentional actions of the “three gates” of body, speech, and mind—everything we do, say, or think with volitional intention. Our actions and reactions form the cause and effect of action (Skt. karma; Tib. las) that in turn determines the kinds of experiences we have. As such, our mind has the potential to transport us to elevated states of existence or to plunge us into demeaning states of confusion and anguish. Our actions are not like footprints left on water; they leave imprints in our minds, the consequences of which will invariably manifest unless we can somehow nullify them. As the thirteenth Karmapa, Dudul Dorje (1733–97) states: In the empty dwelling place of confusion, Desire is unchanging, marked on the mind Like an etching on rock.13 The thoughts and emotions we experience and the attitudes and beliefs we hold all help to mold our character and dispositions and the kind of people we become. Conditioned existence is characterized by delusions, defilements, confusions, and disturbances of all kinds. We have to ask ourselves why we experience so much pain, while our pleasures are so ephemeral and transient. The answer is that these are the karmic fruits of our negative actions (Skt. papa-karma; Tib. sdig pa’i las). Jamgön Kongtrül says: The result of wholesome action is happiness; the result of unwholesome action is suffering, and nothing else. These results are not interchangeable: when you plant buckwheat, you get buckwheat; when you plant barley, you get barley.14 This cycle of cause and effect continues relentlessly, unless we embark on a virtuous spiritual path and learn to reverse this process by performing wholesome actions (Skt. kusala-karma; Tib. dge ba’i las). It is our intentions that determine whether an action is wholesome or unwholesome, and therefore it is our intentions that will dictate the quality of our future experiences. We have to think of karmic cause and effect in the following terms: “My current suffering is due to the negative actions, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions I performed in the past, and whatever I think, say, and do now will determine what I experience and become in the future. So from now on, I will contemplate the truth of karma, and pursue my spiritual practices with enthusiasm and positive intentions.

… the conjunction of Beethoven’s last symphonic masterpiece with crucial works or events in the lives of so many other outstanding artists made 1824 a particularly fertile year…. The fact that the Ninth Symphony, Byron’s death, Pushkin’s Boris Gudunov and “To the Sea,” Delacroix’s Massacres at Chios, Stendhal’s Racine and Shakespeare, and Heine’s Harz Journey and North Sea Pictures all futhered, in one way or another, Romanticism’s rear-guard action against repression underlines the significance of that speck of time. And perhaps these brief glances at those artists and their states of being at that moment will have helped to remind readers—as they reminded this author—that spiritual and intellectual liberation requires endless internal warfare against everything in ourselves that narrows us down instead of opening us up and that replaces questing with certitude. Nearly two centuries later, the world still overflows with people who believe that truth not only exists but that it is simple and straightforward, and that their truths—be they political, religious, philosophical, moral, or social—constitute The Truth. Federico Fellini’s characterization, a generation ago, of the fascist mentality as “a refusal to deepen one’s individual relationship to life, out of laziness, prejudice, unwillingness to inconvenience oneself, and presumptuousness” describes the obedient adherents of most prefabricated beliefs, everywhere and at all times. The others—the disobedient, the nonadherents, those who think that the world is not easily explained and that human experience does not fit into tidy little compartments—are still fighting the eternally unwinnable War of Liberation. Until our sorry species bombs or gluts itself into oblivion, the skirmishing will continue, and what Beethoven and company keep telling us, from the ever-receding yet ever-present past, is that the struggle must continue (pp. 110-11).

Table 6.1 Skill Categories Skill Category Description Comment Determining the Meaning of Words (Word Meaning) Student determines the meaning of words in context by recognizing known words and connecting them to prior vocabulary knowledge. Student uses a variety of skills to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words, including pronouncing words to trigger recognition, searching for related words with similar meanings, and analyzing prefixes, roots, and suffixes. This skill category includes more than just lexical access, as word identification and lexical recall are combined with morphological analyses. Understanding the Content, Form, and Function of Sentences (Sentence Meaning) Student builds upon an understanding of words and phrases to determine the meaning of a sentence. Student analyzes sentence structures and draws on an understanding of grammar rules to determine how the parts of speech in a sentence operate together to support the overall meaning. Student confirms that his or her understanding of a sentence makes sense in relationship to previous sentences, personal experience, and general knowledge of the world. This skill category focuses on the syntactical, grammatical, and semantic case analyses that support elementary proposition encoding and integration of propositions across contiguous sentences. Understanding the Situation Implied by a Text (Situation Model) Student develops a mental model (i.e., image, conception) of the people, things, setting, actions, ideas, and events in a text. Student draws on personal experience and world knowledge to infer cause-and-effect relationships between actions and events to fill in additional information needed to understand the situation implied by the text. This skill category is a hybrid of the explicit text model and the elaborated situation model described by Kintsch (1998). As such, category three combines both lower-level explicit text interpretation and higher-level inferential processes that connect the explicit text to existing knowledge structures and schemata. Understanding the Content, Form, and Function of Larger Sections of Text (Global Text Meaning) Student synthesizes the meaning of multiple sentences into an understanding of paragraphs or larger sections of texts. Student recognizes a text’s organizational structure and uses that organization to guide his or her reading. Student can identify the main point of, summarize, characterize, or evaluate the meaning of larger sections of text. Student can identify underlying assumptions in a text, recognize implied consequences, and draw conclusions from a text. This skill category focuses on the integration of local propositions into macro-level text structures (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978) and more global themes (Louwerse & Van Peer, 2003). It also includes elaborative inferencing that supports interpretation and critical comprehension, such as identifying assumptions, causes, and consequence and drawing conclusions at the level of the situation model. Analyzing Authors’ Purposes, Goals, and Strategies (Pragmatic Meaning) Student identifies an author’s intended audience and purposes for writing. Student analyzes an author’s choices regarding content, organization, style, and genre, evaluating how those choices support the author’s purpose and are appropriate for the intended audience and situation. This skill category includes contextual and pragmatic discourse analyses that support interpretation of texts in light of inferred authorial intentions and strategies.

The world is in its inherent nature (swabhaav). Satyug (era of the time cycle that is characterized by unity in thoughts, speech, and action), Kaliyug (the current era of the time cycle, which is characterized by lack of unity in thought, speech, and action) is based on the intents of people!

We argue that people are neither their race, nor their work, their nationality, politics, color, creed or economic status. They are individuals. Characterized by their own beliefs, values and virtues, who can only be judged by the behavior displayed through their individual, independent action.

To put it in somewhat contradictory terms, true tea existed only before the advent of the tea ceremony. After the coming of tea, when deformation came to be consciously sought, common everyday beauty disappeared and unnatural manipulation began. This meant the demise of the beauty of tea. Every country, according to its historical and geographical conditions, has its own peculiar character. India is characterized by intellect, China by ready action and Japan by aesthetic perception - the three splendors of the East. Indians are adept at thinking, Chinese at acting and Japanese at appreciating art. In Europe, France is close to Japan, Judaism to China and Germany to India. In Germany, however, the intellect tends to be philosophical rather than religious. While there may be many intrinsic contradictions, I still think that there is probably no country like Japan whose people live in surroundings composed of specially chosen objects. Behind it all is undoubtedly some sort of educated taste or standard of beauty. In Korea, the number of monochrome pieces in white or black glaze is stupendous. there are no intricate designs featuring a multitude of colors. the same is true for Korean textiles, which are undyed. Everyone wears white clothing.

For starters, a masculine spirituality would emphasize movement over stillness, action over theory, service to the world over religious discussions, speaking the truth over social niceties and doing justice instead of any self-serving “charity.” Without a complementary masculine, spirituality becomes overly feminine (which is really a false feminine!) and is characterized by too much inwardness, preoccupation with relationships, a morass of unclarified feeling and religion itself as a security blanket. This prevents a journey to anyplace new, and fosters a constant protecting of the old. It is no-risk religion, just the opposite of Abraham, Moses, Paul and Jesus. In my humble masculine opinion I believe much of the modern, sophisticated church is swirling in what I will describe as a kind of “neuter” religion. It is one of the main reasons that doers, movers, shakers and change agents have largely given up on church people and church groups. As one very effective woman said to me, “After a while you get tired of the in-house jargon that seems to go nowhere.” A neuter spirituality is the trap of those with lots of leisure, luxury and self-serving ideas. They have the option not to do, not to change, not to long and thirst for justice. It can take either a liberal or a conservative form, but in either case, it becomes an inoculation against any deep spiritual journey. That’s why I call it “neuter.” It generates no real sexual energy or life.

Across ancient cultures, then, killing was far less important than other parts of the sacrificial ritual.34 It was those other actions that characterized sacrifice for ancient people. Historian Robert Parker’s observation about Greek religion can be extended to all these cultures: “It does not emerge from the combined evidence of literary texts, art, and ritual rules that the act of killing was the central moment in the ritual.”35 Thus, as two other scholars conclude, “the view that sacrifice is essentially, or even primarily, about killing can no longer be maintained.

When you have murky areas of responsibility for your emotions and actions—areas where it’s unclear who is responsible for what, whose fault is what, why you’re doing what you’re doing—you never develop strong values for yourself. Your only value becomes making your partner happy. Or your only value becomes your partner making you happy. This is self-defeating, of course. And relationships characterized by such murkiness usually go down like the Hindenburg, with all the drama and fireworks. People can’t solve your problems for you. And they shouldn’t try, because that won’t make you happy. You can’t solve other people’s problems for them either, because that likewise won’t make them happy.

The Positive School is characterized by a consensus perspective. All the theories developed under its mantle assume the existence of a core set of values in society that can be used to determine and treat deviance. Positivists did not question the validity of their categories of harmful acts or the desirability of treating people. In fact, their assumption of consensus was so strong that they rarely ever questioned their own actions, even when “exterminating” groups of people designated as socially harmful. Other than the consensus perspective, the wide range of positivist theories makes any attempt at categorizing them very difficult. Positivist theories can be either structural or processual, so no definitive classification is possible. However, we can state that sociological theories have, as a rule, been structurally oriented and macrotheoretical, while biological and psychological theories have been processual and microtheoretical. Summary The work of the Positive School, diverse as it was, represented the first real concern with studying the behavior of the criminal. As Rafter (2006) explains, before Lombroso, crime was studied only by metaphysicians, moralists, and penologists. His work turned the field into a truly biosocial science. Embracing the scientific method, positivists took a deterministic stance toward behavior and left behind the Classical School’s insistence that humans are rational beings with free will. In the process, the notion of punishment for deterrence began to make less sense. If an individual’s behavior was not predicated on rational decisions, then how could that individual be deterred? The thing to do, obviously, was to find those factors that cause the criminal behavior and remove (or treat) them. Further, the ability to predict which individuals would be likely to become criminal and to treat them before they could harm themselves and society would be valuable in creating a better society.

claSSIfIcatIon of the School The Positive School is characterized by a consensus perspective. All the theories developed under its mantle assume the existence of a core set of values in society that can be used to determine and treat deviance. Positivists did not question the validity of their categories of harmful acts or the desirability of treating people. In fact, their assumption of consensus was so strong that they rarely ever questioned their own actions, even when “exterminating” groups of people designated as socially harmful. Other than the consensus perspective, the wide range of positivist theories makes any attempt at categorizing them very difficult. Positivist theories can be either structural or processual, so no definitive classification is possible. However, we can state that sociological theories have, as a rule, been structurally oriented and macrotheoretical, while biological and psychological theories have been processual and microtheoretical. Summary The work of the Positive School, diverse as it was, represented the first real concern with studying the behavior of the criminal. As Rafter (2006) explains, before Lombroso, crime was studied only by metaphysicians, moralists, and penologists. His work turned the field into a truly biosocial science. Embracing the scientific method, positivists took a deterministic stance toward behavior and left behind the Classical School’s insistence that humans are rational beings with free will. In the process, the notion of punishment for deterrence began to make less sense. If an individual’s behavior was not predicated on rational decisions, then how could that individual be deterred? The thing to do, obviously, was to find those factors that cause the criminal behavior and remove (or treat) them. Further, the ability to predict which individuals would be likely to become criminal and to treat them before they could harm themselves and society would be valuable in creating a better society.

Chapter 3•The Positive School claSSIfIcatIon of the School The Positive School is characterized by a consensus perspective. All the theories developed under its mantle assume the existence of a core set of values in society that can be used to determine and treat deviance. Positivists did not question the validity of their categories of harmful acts or the desirability of treating people. In fact, their assumption of consensus was so strong that they rarely ever questioned their own actions, even when “exterminating” groups of people designated as socially harmful. Other than the consensus perspective, the wide range of positivist theories makes any attempt at categorizing them very difficult. Positivist theories can be either structural or processual, so no definitive classification is possible. However, we can state that sociological theories have, as a rule, been structurally oriented and macrotheoretical, while biological and psychological theories have been processual and microtheoretical. Summary The work of the Positive School, diverse as it was, represented the first real concern with studying the behavior of the criminal. As Rafter (2006) explains, before Lombroso, crime was studied only by metaphysicians, moralists, and penologists. His work turned the field into a truly biosocial science. Embracing the scientific method, positivists took a deterministic stance toward behavior and left behind the Classical School’s insistence that humans are rational beings with free will. In the process, the notion of punishment for deterrence began to make less sense. If an individual’s behavior was not predicated on rational decisions, then how could that individual be deterred? The thing to do, obviously, was to find those factors that cause the criminal behavior and remove (or treat) them. Further, the ability to predict which individuals would be likely to become criminal and to treat them before they could harm themselves and society would be valuable in creating a better society.

As to the worldview of the idealist school of thought, “realism” is its preferred perspective. Stanley Grenz encapsulates this mind-set of the idealist, amillennial position: The result is a world view characterized by realism. Victory and defeat, success and failure, good and evil will coexist until the end, amillennialism asserts. The future is neither a heightened continuation of the present nor an abrupt contradiction to it. The kingdom of God does not come by human cooperation with the divine power currently at work in the world, but neither is it simply the divine gift for which we can only wait expectantly32 Consequently, both unbridled optimism and despairing pessimism are inappropriate, amillennialism declares. Rather, the amillennialist worldview calls the church to “realistic activity” in the world. Under the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the church will be successful in its mandate; yet ultimate success will come only through God’s grace. The kingdom of God arrives as the divine action breaking into the world; yet human cooperation brings important, albeit penultimate, results. Therefore, God’s people must expect great things in the present; but knowing that the kingdom will never arrive in its fullness in history, they must always remain realistic in their expectations.

Time after time, video games have proven able to bring out the attentional resources in people that they never suspected they had. And what’s more, the kind of sustained attention and newfound appreciation of detail that emerges from the process of engagement can then transfer to other domains, beyond the screen. Cognitive neuroscientists Daphné Bavelier and C. Shawn Green, for instance, have found repeatedly that socalled “action” video games—games characterized by high speed, high perceptual and motor load, upredictability, and the need for peripheral processing—enhance visual attention, low-level vision, processing

But in actuality, the assumption that there is no freedom leads to the exact opposite of order in human behavior. If we all really felt we were not free to make our own choices of how to face and deal with the conditions set for us by heredity and environment, we would also feel no responsibility for our behavior. And we would be right. We couldn’t be blamed for action over which we had no control, so we would make no real effort to act responsibly. We would give free rein to our passions on the grounds that whatever we did was part of the cause-and-effect sequence of events preordained by the conditions. Instead of orderly human conduct, there would be chaos. In fact, much of the irresponsible antisocial behavior that characterizes our modern society stems from the fact that many people have studied or otherwise absorbed this scientific doctrine of determinism. As a result, they have unconsciously excused their own behavior as well as that of others on the grounds that it is determined by factors beyond control.

As I wrote this book, though, I realized that m joy at these two inheritances came at other people’s expense; that the land that allowed the Chickasaws to become two of the wealthiest and most influential tribes in Oklahoma came from other Native peoples who previously had lived upon it; that the land that allowed my family and hundreds of others in Indian Territory to become Black property owners was part of the broader theft of Indian land that also led to the loss of much Native sovereignty, culture, and language. I characterize the different protagonists that populate my book as settlers because my perspective as their descendant has helped me to see how their freedoms and opportunities were begotten by impeding the freedoms and opportunities of others. The sources I’ve analyzed demonstrate that my ancestors’ involvement and investment in this settler colonial process made their lives subtly easier and helped them survive. They were in difficult circumstances—forced migrations across oceans and across lands—but they were not forced to use the specific language and actions they chose. Though they were limited by their circumstances, as we all are, they actively chose their path in the midst of a myriad of difficult decisions. I few looked at just this, would it not be clear? Would we not consider them settlers? Reconciling divergent histories has granted me another way of looking at these peoples and places: a as heightened example of how oppressed people can oppress other people—no matter how trite that may seem.

An authentic personality characterizes people by their actions and is never fooled by their words no matter how sugary those are.

The ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes requires humility, and the impetus for doing so requires patience rooted in hope and tolerance grounded in love. This is increasingly difficult at a time in which, as Sherry Turkle argues, social media and other technology significantly reduce our ability to exercise empathy.11 Indeed, we have seen a sharp decline in our ability to sympathize, understand, and talk face-to-face with those who have different views and beliefs. If our culture cannot form people who can speak with both conviction and empathy across deep differences, then it becomes even more important for the church to use its theological and spiritual resources to produce such people. The Christian calling is to be shaped and reshaped into people whose every thought and action is characterized by faith, hope, and love—and who then speak and act in the world with humility, patience, and tolerance.

Cognitive-behavioural therapists call the treatment of such people, generally characterized by the more feminine traits of agreeableness (politeness and compassion) and neuroticism (anxiety and emotional pain), “assertiveness training.”197 Insufficiently aggressive women—and men, although more rarely—do too much for others. They tend to treat those around them as if they were distressed children. They tend to be naïve. They assume that cooperation should be the basis of all social transactions, and they avoid conflict (which means they avoid confronting problems in their relationships as well as at work). They continually sacrifice for others. This may sound virtuous—and it is definitely an attitude that has certain social advantages—but it can and often does become counterproductively one-sided. Because too-agreeable people bend over backwards for other people, they do not stand up properly for themselves. Assuming that others think as they do, they expect—instead of ensuring—reciprocity for their thoughtful actions. When this does not happen, they don’t speak up. They do not or cannot straightforwardly demand recognition. The dark side of their characters emerges, because of their subjugation, and they become resentful.

These days even wanting is mediated by models of the will, by forms of making people want something - by persuasion or dissuasion. Even if such categories as wishing, being able, believing, knowing, acting, desiring and enjoying still retain some meaning, they have all been monopolized, as it were, by a simple auxiliary mode. Everywhere the active verb has given way to the factitive, and actions themselves have less importance than the fact that they are produced, induced, solicited, media-ized or technicized. There is to be no knowledge save that which results from having (people) know. No speaking save that which results from having (people) speak - i.e. from an act of communication. No more actions save those which result from an interaction - complete, if possible, with television monitor and built-in feedback. For the thing that characterizes operation, as opposed to action, is precisely that operations are necessarily regulated in the way in which they occur - otherwise, there would be no communication. Speaking - but no communication. Communication is operational or it is nothing. Information is operational or it is nothing.

Wilderness leaders need to understand that there are varying normal responses to a crisis. Until there is time to regroup, behaviors may seem unusual when, in truth, they should be expected. Some behaviors that may emerge in the face of a crisis include: 1. Regression. Many grown people revert to an earlier stage of development. The theory is that, since their parents used to care for them as children, someone else may care for them now if they behave in a childlike manner. In particular, tantrums used to be very effective. Tantrum-like or very dependent behavior is not unusual. 2. Depression. Closing into one’s inner world is another common response to crisis. This is where some people find the sources of strength to cope with an emergency. This is characterized as a shutdown effect: fetal positioning, slumped shoulders, downcast eyes, arms crossed over the chest, and unwillingness or difficulty in communicating. 3. Aggression. Some people lash out, physically or emotionally, at threats, including the vague threat of an emergency. High adrenaline levels may intensify the response, and so may the feelings of frustration, anger, and fear that commonly surround unexpected circumstances. This response is characterized by explosive body language, including swinging fists and jumping up and down. What one should do about the various behaviors that surface during a crisis depends somewhat on the individual circumstances. As a general rule, open communication, acknowledgement of the emotional impact of the event, and a healthy dose of patience and tolerance can go far during resolution of the situation. Some basic procedures to consider in crisis management might include the following: 1. Engage the patient in a calm, rational discussion. You can start the patient down the trail that leads through the crisis. 2. Identify the specific concerns about which the patient is stressed. You both need to be talking about the same problems. 3. Provide realistic and optimistic feedback. You can help the patient return to objective thinking. 4. Involve the patient in solving the problem. You can help the patient and/or the patient can help you choose and implement a plan of action. Someone who completely loses control needs time to settle down to become an asset to the situation. Breaking through to someone who has lost control can be a challenge. Try repetitive persistence, a technique developed for telephone interrogation by emergency services dispatchers. Remain calm, but firm. Choose a positive statement that includes the person’s name, such as, “Todd, we can help once you calm down.” (An example of a negative statement would be, “Todd, we can’t help unless you settle down.”) Persistently repeat the statement with the same words in the same tone of voice. The irresistible force (you) will eventually overwhelm the immovable object (the out-of-control person). Surprisingly few repetitions are usually needed to get through to the patient, as long as the tone of voice remains calm. Letting frustration or other emotions creep into the tone of voice, or changing the message, can ruin the entire effort. Over time, the overwhelming responses that generated the reaction may occasionally resurface. This is normal. Without being judgmental or impatient, regain control through repetitive persistence. A crisis may bring out a humorous side (sometimes appropriately, sometimes not) among the group. When you wish to release the intensity surrounding a situation or crisis, appropriate laughter is one of the best methods. It should also be noted that many people cope just fine with emergency situations and unexpected circumstances. They are a source of strength and an example of model behavior for the others.

Characterize people by their actions, and you'll never be fooled by their words.

Many of the female clients (perhaps even a majority) that I see in my clinical practice have trouble in their jobs and family lives not because they are too aggressive, but because they are not aggressive enough. Cognitive-behavioural therapists call the treatment of such people, generally characterized by the more feminine traits of agreeableness (politeness and compassion) and neuroticism (anxiety and emotional pain), “assertiveness training.”197 Insufficiently aggressive women—and men, although more rarely—do too much for others. They tend to treat those around them as if they were distressed children. They tend to be naïve. They assume that cooperation should be the basis of all social transactions, and they avoid conflict (which means they avoid confronting problems in their relationships as well as at work). They continually sacrifice for others. This may sound virtuous—and it is definitely an attitude that has certain social advantages—but it can and often does become counterproductively one-sided. Because too-agreeable people bend over backwards for other people, they do not stand up properly for themselves. Assuming that others think as they do, they expect—instead of ensuring—reciprocity for their thoughtful actions. When this does not happen, they don’t speak up. They do not or cannot straightforwardly demand recognition. The dark side of their characters emerges, because of their subjugation, and they become resentful.

20)   He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21)   He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22)   He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23)   He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24)   He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25)   He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26)   He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27)   Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28)   He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29)   He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30)   His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

To the obvious objection that the most cursory glance at human society showed some people to be happy while others were unhappy, Franklin rejoined that appearances deceived. “When we see riches, grandeur and a cheerful countenance, we easily imagine happiness accompanies them, when oftentimes ’tis quite otherwise; nor is a constantly sorrowful look, attended with continual complaints, an infallible indication of unhappiness.” Having disposed of happiness and unhappiness, Franklin attacked the notion of the immortality of the soul. He identified the soul with consciousness and the ability to treat ideas absorbed by the senses (“The soul is a mere power or faculty of contemplating on and comparing those ideas”), and then argued that when consciousness ended, the soul ceased to exist. Perhaps the soul in some way attached itself to a new body and new ideas. “But that will in no way concern us who are now living, for the identity will be lost; it is no longer that same self but a new being.” If temporal happiness was an illusion, and eternal happiness an impossibility, why should anyone strive for anything? Merely to avoid pain. The soul of an infant did not achieve consciousness (“it is as if it were not”) until it felt pain. Thus is the machine set on work; this is life. We are first moved by pain, and the whole succeeding course of our lives is but one continued series of action with a view to be freed from it. As fast as we have excluded one uneasiness another appears; otherwise the motion would cease. If a continual weight is not applied, the clock will stop. And as soon as the avenues of uneasiness to the soul are choked up or cut off, we are dead, we think and act no more. Like most such attempts to prove the unprovable, Franklin’s effort revealed more about the author than about the subject. Indeed, it revealed more about the author than he cared to have revealed. Although his employer, Palmer, was impressed by the ingenuity of Franklin’s argumentation, he decried Franklin’s conclusions as abominable. This reaction prompted Franklin to reconsider. In his autobiography he characterized various mistakes of his life as “errata”; regarding this episode he asserted, “My printing this pamphlet was another erratum.” Long before then he had burned all but the few copies already delivered to friends.