Compromise Short Quotes

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty….The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history. It was decided to do everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it…we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality….In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad.

The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations. There can be few who believe that in the coming year a record as great as, say, the Stooges’ Funhouse or Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On will be released. Still less do we expect the kind of ruptures brought about by The Beatles or disco. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of ‘nostalgia’. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia, of which more shortly. It is not that nothing happened in the period when the slow cancellation of the future set in. On the contrary, those thirty years has been a time of massive, traumatic change. In the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher had brought to an end the uneasy compromises of the so-called postwar social consensus. Thatcher’s neoliberal programme in politics was reinforced by a transnational restructuring of the capitalist economy. The shift into so-called Post-Fordism – with globalization, ubiquitous computerization and the casualisation of labour – resulted in a complete transformation in the way that work and leisure were organised. In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition. Yet, perhaps because of all this, there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore.

I never wanted to fall in love. Only stupid girls compromised themselves that way, and I was too smart to sell myself short.

In short, health is measured by the shock a person can take without his usual way of life being compromised

All the same, we ought to point out that if the kinds of poetry and representation which are designed merely to give pleasure can come up with a rational argument for their inclusion in a well-governed community, we'd be delighted -- short of compromising the truth as we see it, which wouldn't be right -- to bring them back from exile: after all, we know from our own experience all about their spell. I mean haven't you ever fallen under the spell of poetry, Glaucon, especially when the spectacle is provided by Homer?

Pride and integrity are some ingredients that define respect. Don't compromise them for short lived attention.

We’re not killing Stefan.” Cali asserted. “We are.” Max’s reply was short and to the point. “Not.” Cali added. Max’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Fine. We’ll just maim him. A person doesn’t need a nut sack to live. See, I can compromise.” She ended smiling winningly. Cali

In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed. By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today. Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison. Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.

We all know the kinds of short-term states we can enter that can compromise our empathy. These include being drunk, tired, impatient, or stressed, during which we might say or do the wrong thing to someone else and later regret it. The feeling of regret is a sign of our empathy circuit coming back on, but the fact that we say or do the wrong thing is nevertheless—at that moment—a fluctuation in our empathy circuit.

The best compromise between love and good sense is both to feel longing and to conquer it.

Life was too short to sit around waiting for Mr Perfect.

There’s always another option. There’s always another one. It’s never only 'this' or 'that,' The moon or else the sun. Don’t sigh and choose the greater Or lesser of two plights. But look to see the stars beyond For options vast and bright.

He had reached some compromise in his mind that fatherhood could be distilled; short, concentrated (but sincere) bursts of high intensity could equal…whatever it was that other fathers did. All I knew was, if that was the price of medicine, it was simply too high.

If we examine what is behind our desires, we can usually get what we want without compromising: love, caring, confidence, respectability, excitement. Compromising is necessary only if what we want is in short supply.

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constituitionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible. It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong', or 'They can't do that; it's against the law', are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan's Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take places at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a 'miscarriage of British justice'. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory. An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is 'just the same as' or 'just as bad as' totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct,national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the caster oil? The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class. But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become completely corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there any direct bribery. Even hypocrisy is powerful safeguard. The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig,whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe,is one of the symbolic figures of England. He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.

Christians should be known less as culture warriors and more as Good Samaritans who stop for battered neighbors, whether they are black, white, brown, male, female, gay, straight, rich, poor, old, young, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist, capitalist, socialist, Republican, Democrat, near, far, tall, short, or smaller than a peanut.

He has,in short,reached his peak as a hunter,exuberantly altered from the pale,overweight statesman of ten months ago. Africa's way of reducing every problem of existence to dire alternatives-shoot or starve,kill or be killed,shelter or suffer,procreate or count for nothing-has clarified his thinking,purged him of politics and its constant search for compromise.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.

Nobody likes to fail, but there is a difference between a normal aversion to failure and an intense fear of failure. Aversion to failure motivates us to take necessary precautions and to work harder to achieve success. By contrast, intense fear of failure often handicaps us, making us reject failure so vigorously that we cannot take the risks that are necessary for growth. This fear not only compromises our performance but jeopardizes our overall psychological well-being. Failure is an inescapable part of life and a critically important part of any successful life. We learn to walk by falling, to talk by babbling, to shoot a basket by missing, and to color the inside of a square by scribbling outside the box. Those who intensely fear failing end up falling short of their potential. We either learn to fail or we fail to learn.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you." In short, entertainment fulfills our expectations. Art, on the other hand, makes no compromise for public taste as it inspires us to consider life's complexities and ambiguities. Art is the opposition testing the strength of societal and cultural values-values that are thoughtlessly adopted by the mass of individuals living unexamined lives and all who cannot imagine a different way of seeing life.

Youth leaders, are you holding aloft our standards, or have you compromised them for the lowest common denominator in order to appease the deceived or vile within the Church? Are the dances and music in your cultural halls virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, and of good report (Articles of Faith 13), or do they represent a modern Sodom with short skirts, loud beat, strobe lights, and darkness?

Now as I stood on the roof of my house, taking in this unexpected view, it struck me how rather glorious it was that in two thousand years of human activity the only thing that had stirred the notice of the outside world even briefly was the finding of a Roman phallic pendant. The rest was just centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - eating, sleeping, having sex, endeavoring to be amused- and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things. Even Einstein will have spent large parts of his life thinking about his holidays o new hammock or how dainty was the ankle on the young lady alighting from the tram across the street. These are the sort of things that fill our life and thoughts, and yet we treat them as incidental and hardly worthy of serious consideration. I don't know how many hours of my school years were spent considering the Missouri Compromise or the War of the Roses, but it was vastly more than I was ever encouraged or allowed to give to the history of eating. sleeping, having sex and endeavoring to be amused.

Being resolute today means to act within the framework of political and social pluralism and the rule of law to provide conditions for continued reform and prevent a breakdown of the state and economic collapse, prevent the elements of chaos from becoming catastrophic. All this requires taking certain tactical steps, to search for various ways of addressing both short- and long-term tasks. Such efforts and political and economic steps, agreements based on reasonable compromise, are there for everyone to see.

Never compromise the things that’ll matter most to you one day because you feel the urge to satisfy yourself today.

Not until 1902, at an early meeting of the International Congress of Zoology, did naturalists begin at last to show a spirit of compromise and adopt a universal code. Taxonomy

Moral leadership requires the judgment to make the right short-term compromises so as to realize the long-term change we seek.

Trade-unionism, the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush the trade-union movement, and condemned the exponents of man's right to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of English labor unions) direct, revolutionary, economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor's power. The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest.

Are you giving up your long-term interests or compromising your personal values in exchange for short-term anxiety relief? If the answer is yes to these questions, you’ve found a safety strategy.

I have often behaved badly and I have often behaved foolishly; but, as it happens, I find that on the whole, the things that I have been most blamed for are exactly the things I would do again to-morrow if I had the chance. The things I regret are, generally speaking, the occasional compromises and the (infrequent) runnings away from high attitudes which I failed to carry through to their ends. In short, what I regret in my life is just that part of it which worldly wisdom applauds… A thing does not become right because the world says it is right, any more than it becomes wrong because the world says it is wrong. One can act only according to one’s lights and if one is in good faith, one may hope that in the long run justification will result, even if not in this world or in one’s own lifetime.

If you’ve got your health, you can always make some money. But all the dough in the world can’t buy back your health. Isn’t it clear that the person who compromises his health in the name of making money is cutting himself a really lousy deal?

While it’s easier to avoid confrontations in the short run, the consequences of doing so can be massively destructive in the long term. It’s critical that conflicts actually get resolved—not through superficial compromise, but through seeking the important, accurate conclusions.

1926, Heisenberg came up with a celebrated compromise, producing a new discipline that came to be known as quantum mechanics. At the heart of it was Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that the electron is a particle but a particle that can be described in terms of waves.

So many ruins bear witness to good intentions which went astray, good intentions unenlightened by any glimmer of wisdom. To bring religion to the people is a fine and necessary undertaking, but this is not a situation in which the proposed end can be said to justify the means. The further people have drifted from the truth, the greater is the temptation to water down the truth, glossing over its less palatable aspects and, in short, allowing a policy of compromise to become one of adulteration. In this way it is hoped that the common man – if he can be found – will be encouraged to find a small corner in his busy life for religion without having to change his ways or to grapple with disturbing thoughts. It is a forlorn hope. Standing, as it were, at the pavement’s edge with his tray of goods, the priest reduces the price until he is offering his wares for nothing: divine judgement is a myth, hell a wicked superstition, prayer less important than decent behaviour, and God himself dispensable in the last resort; and still the passers-by go their way, sorry over having to ignore such a nice man but with more important matters demanding their attention. And yet these matters with which they are most urgently concerned are, for so many of them, quicksands in which they feel themselves trapped. Had they been offered a real alternative, a rock firm-planted from the beginning of time, they might have been prepared to pay a high price.

Finally, in 1926, Heisenberg came up with a celebrated compromise, producing a new discipline that came to be known as quantum mechanics. At the heart of it was Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that the electron is a particle but a particle that can be described in terms of waves. The uncertainty around which the theory is built is that we can know the path an electron takes as it moves through a space or we can know where it is at a given instant, but we cannot know both.*22 Any attempt to measure one will unavoidably disturb the other. This isn't a matter of simply needing more precise instruments; it is an immutable property of the universe.

West Country novelist Thomas Hardy almost did not survive his birth in 1840 because everyone thought he was stillborn. He did not appear to be breathing and was put to one side for dead. The nurse attending the birth only by chance noticed a slight movement that showed the baby was in fact alive. He lived to be 87 and gave the world 18 novels, including some of the most widely read in English literature. When he did die, there was controversy over where he should be laid to rest. Public opinion felt him too famous to lie anywhere other than in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, the national shrine. He, however, had left clear instructions to be buried in Stinsford, near his birthplace and next to his parents, grandparents, first wife and sister. A compromise was brokered. His ashes were interred in the Abbey. His heart would be buried in his beloved home county. The plan agreed, his heart was taken to his sister’s house ready for burial. Shortly before, as it lay ready on the kitchen table, the family cat grabbed it and disappeared with it into the woods. Although, simultaneously with the national funeral in Westminster Abbey, a burial ceremony took place on 16 January 1928, at Stinsford, there is uncertainty to this day as to what was in the casket: some say it was buried empty; others that it contained the captured cat which had consumed the heart.

There was just that nagging question of character. Andrew was commanding, pragmatic, hardworking, personally incorruptible (so far), fierce in defense of his policies—and willing to compromise when absolutely necessary. In short, a strong leader. He was also vengeful, bullying, mean-spirited, conniving, not always true to his word, and very secretive.

Life is too short to hang around people who are causing you to compromise. Pulling you down. Your time is too valuable to waste it with people who don't have a dream. People that aren't going anywhere. You don't need to make some big announcement, but little by little, you should spend less time with them. 'Joel, what if I hurt their feelings, what if they get upset?' What if you miss your destiny? What if they are keeping you from going to the next level? When you come to the end of life, you won't stand before people, you will stand before God. He has entrusted you with a gift, you have an assignment, there is something for you to accomplish. you have a responsibility to become who God has created you to be. You have to take bold steps to protect what you are feeding.

The upshot of all this work can be summarized as follows: short sleep (of the type that many adults in first-world countries commonly and routinely report) will increase hunger and appetite, compromise impulse control within the brain, increase food consumption (especially of high-calorie foods), decrease feelings of food satisfaction after eating, and prevent effective weight loss when dieting.

Many of you remember when Dutch Elm disease swept the East Coast. People in big cities saw the trees die but it didn’t register, in any way at all, that this would compromise oxygen. Think of it, that many trees dying in that short a time span means there is less photosynthesis. Less oxygen is being produced. Therefore pollution in the big cities becomes more pronounced. These basics do not occur to people who work in buildings where the windows don’t open.

The answer is found in Hebrews 12:14-15: “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.” (See also Psalm 24:4; Matthew 5:8.) God’s Word demands holiness; there is no compromise and nothing less expected from us. Holiness is an important part of diligently seeking to enter into the rest of the Lord.

He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his "cellular function." the analogic term for the individual's individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to his society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength. That was a central idea of Odo's Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and the individual became clear. Sacrifice mught be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice -- the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.

The Court usually begins to issue opinions in November and proceeds to hand down opinions throughout the term. But naturally, the least controversial cases, those that produce unanimous or near-unanimous decisions, get decided first. Complicated cases or those that, for one reason or another, produce numerous concurring and dissenting opinions take longer, perhaps much longer, and only the pressure of an impending July 4 weekend may spur the justices to make the last-minute compromises necessary to bring a decision out by the end of June.

Marriage, in short, is a bargain, like buying a house or entering a profession. One chooses it knowing that, by that very decision, one is abnegating other possibilities. In choosing companionship over passion, women like Beatrice Webb and Virginia Woolf made a bargain; their marriages worked because they did not regret their bargains, or blame their husbands for not being something else--dashing lovers, for example. But in writing biographies, or one's own life, it is both customary and misleading to present such marriages, to oneself or to one's reader, as sad compromises, the best of a bad bargain, or scarcely to speak of them at all. Virginia Woolf mentioned that she, who is reticent about nothing, had never spoken of her life with Leonard. but we know that she said of him that when he entered a room, she had no idea what he was going to say, a remarkable definition of a good marriage. Such marriages are not bad bargains, but the best of a good bargain, and we must learn the language to understand and describe them, particularly in writing the lives of accomplished women.

Since women are seeking different attributes in short-term and long-term partners, but have more choice of short-term they may again have to compromise. They have two main options. They can choose the best available long-term partner, and then rely on infidelity to obtain the best genes. This can succeed, but only if they successfully avoid the disadvantages of infidelity that we have already discussed. Alternatively, they can choose a man who, although neither the best provider of genes nor the best partner, is at least the best available compromise.

I have said this before, and so has Neil, but it bears repeating: if we learned one thing from all of this, it was a young artist's greatest asset is the word "no". It's an immensely valuable word. There will always be pressure on you to compromise, pressure to sell your dreams short, and there will always be people who want you to be something that you're not, but none of these things can happen without your permission. My most urgent advice to aspiring artists is always" Be true to yourself and just say no". Oh, and always take your wallet onstage with you. Bada-bing!

Long before the idea of scanning specimens with a small spot of light produced confocal light microscopy, the idea of using a small spot of electrons to scan surfaces had been around for as long as electron microscopy itself. A surface demarcates the boundary of a solid, and is the site of interaction with the surrounding environment, from a ball bearing to a living cell. In the mechanical world, adhesion, friction, wear, and corrosion are all dependent upon surface properties. The smooth surface of a ball bearing is crucial in the reduction of friction, but its efficiency may well be compromised by wear or corrosion.

Man is not ... of fixed and enduring form. He is ... an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature ... man ... is a bourgeois compromise That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow

Most intellectuals and most artists belong to the same type. Only the strongest of them force their way through the atmosphere of the bourgeois earth and attain to the cosmic. The others all resign themselves or make compromises. Despising the bourgeoisie, and yet belonging to it, they add to its strength and glory; for in the last resort they have to share their beliefs in order to live. The lives of these infinitely numerous persons make no claim to the tragic; but they live under an evil star in a quite considerable affliction; and in this hell their talents ripen and bear fruit. The few who break free seek their reward in the unconditioned and go down in splendor. They wear the thorn crown and their number is small. The others, however, who remain in the fold and from whose talents the bourgeoisie reaps much gain, have a third kingdom left open to them, an imaginary and yet a sovereign world, humor. The lone wolves who know no peace, these victims of unceasing pain to whom the urge for tragedy has been denied and who can never break through the starry space,who feel themselves summoned thither and yet cannot survive in its atmosphere—for them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits tough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and an escape into humor. Humor has always something bourgeois in it, although the true bourgeois is incapable of understanding it. In its imaginary realm the intricate and manyfaceted ideal of all Steppenwolves finds its realisation. Here it is possible not only to extol the saint and the profligate in one breath and to make the poles meet, but to include the bourgeois, too, in the same affirmation. Now it is possible to be possessed by God and to affirm the sinner, and vice versa, but it is not possible for either saint or sinner (or for any other of the unconditioned) to affirm as well that lukewarm mean, the bourgeois. Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism. To live in the world as though it were not the world, to respect the law and yet to stand above it, to have possessions as though "one possessed nothing," to renounce as though it were no renunciation, all these favorite and often formulated propositions of an exalted worldly wisdom, it is in the power of humor alone to make efficacious.

If people literally applied counterfactual religious principles and prescriptions to factual navigation of everyday environments they would likely be either dead or in the afterlife in very short order—probably in too short an order for individuals to reproduce and the species to survive. Imagine that you could suspend the known physical and biological laws of the universe with a prayer (or, for those who are less institutionalized, by crossing your fingers). The trick is in knowing how and when to suspend factual belief without countermanding the facts and compromising survival. But why take the risk of neglecting the facts at all, even in exceptional circumstances? As

The wonderful science behind taking the chastity pill is to preserve honor, respect, purity and worth. Again, the value of a woman’s future is dependent on how well she blocks any advances, foul balls, interceptions or explorations. It’s no surprise I question everything. What does going to the movies have to do with my vagina? What does going to the grocery store at ten pm at night to pick up a package of brownie mix have to do with my vagina? Why is ok for me not to go to a high school football game? Does wearing a tank top instead of a short sleeve shirt compromise my vagina shield? Do I have an Anti-Vagina Defense security chip installed on me that I’m not aware of, one that only works with loose clothing?

So on 6 February 1685, the new king, James II, ascended the throne in the face of sustained and organized opposition from Shaftesbury and the Whigs. He was fifty-two years of age and in vigorous health. He had already proved himself to be determined and decisive; he had remained faithful to his Catholic beliefs despite every attempt to persuade him otherwise. He was more resolute and more trustworthy than his brother, but he lacked Charles’s geniality and perceptiveness. He seemed to have no great capacity for compromise and viewed the world about him in the simple terms of light and darkness; there was the monarchy and authority on on side, with republicanism and disorder on the other. His manner was stiff and restrained, his temper short.

BECAUSE MY FATHER WASN’T allowed to hunt hippies, he decided to settle for hunting deer instead. It was a good compromise, all things considered. Deer were the pacifists of the animal kingdom. They sat around doing weeds all day and didn’t even try to get jobs. The males of the species pranced and ate salad and had a hundred kids they didn’t know about. In November, a long line of them marched to the polls, leaves held delicately in their mouths, each marked with the name of the Green Party candidate. A deer, in short, was a peace sign made out of meat, and the only way to fight it was with bullets. “PROPAGANDA!” he once burst out suddenly, when he caught Mary and me watching Bambi in the living room, curled up together on the couch. If there was any fictional character my father hated, it was Bambi.

Anything you do to optimize your work, cut some corners, or squeeze more “efficiency” out of it (and out of your life) will eventually make you dislike it. Artisans have their soul in the game. Primo, artisans do things for existential reasons first, financial and commercial ones later. Their decision making is never fully financial, but it remains financial. Secundo, they have some type of “art” in their profession; they stay away from most aspects of industrialization; they combine art and business. Tertio, they put some soul in their work: they would not sell something defective or even of compromised quality because it hurts their pride. Finally, they have sacred taboos, things they would not do even if it markedly increased profitability. Compendiaria res improbitas, virtusque tarda—the villainous takes the short road, virtue the longer one. In other words, cutting corners is dishonest.

The psychological devastation women experience stems in part from damage to a woman’s sexual reputation. This reputation, in turn, is formed and driven by two key evolutionary forces of sexual selection—men’s mate preferences and women’s intrasexual competition. Men worldwide prioritize sexual fidelity in long-term mates. Men interpret cues to perceived promiscuity as compromising prospects for fidelity in a committed partner. In contrast, men are attracted to cues of a woman’s perceived promiscuity when they seek casual sex partners because these cues convey information about their chances of succeeding sexually. So victims of revenge porn suffer damage to their long-term mate value in the eyes of men. Women perceived as promiscuous, even if that perception is entirely erroneous and based on images they themselves have not posted, also tend to be slotted in the male brain as potential short-term mates.

In fact, only six days later, with Chief Justice Marshall not participating, the Court avoided a possible constitutional confrontation. Voting 5–0 in Stuart v. Laird (1803), the justices upheld Congress’s repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, a move some historians see as reflecting the Court’s unwillingness to test the full dimensions of the power it had just claimed for itself. More than half a century would pass before the Supreme Court again declared an act of Congress unconstitutional. That was the Dred Scott decision of 1857 (Scott v. Sandford), invalidating the Missouri Compromise and holding that Congress lacked authority to abolish slavery in the territories. That notorious decision, a step on the road to the Civil War, was perhaps not the best advertisement for judicial review. But since then, the Court has lost its early reticence. It has declared acts of Congress unconstitutional more than 150 times.

The Constitutional Convention quickly agreed to the proposal of Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia for a national government of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. Randolph’s resolution “that a national Judiciary be established” passed unanimously. Debating and defining the powers of Congress in Article I and of the president in Article II consumed much of the delegates’ attention and energy. Central provisions of Article III were the product of compromise and, in its fewer than five hundred words, the article left important questions unresolved. Lacking agreement on a role for lower courts, for example, the delegates simply left it to Congress to decide how to structure them. The number of justices remained unspecified. Article III itself makes no reference to the office of chief justice, to whom the Constitution (in Article I) assigns only one specific duty, that of presiding over a Senate trial in a presidential impeachment.

Then there are the metabolic costs of switching itself that I wrote about earlier. Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain. This leads to compromises in both cognitive and physical performance. Among other things, repeated task switching leads to anxiety, which raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which in turn can lead to aggressive and impulsive behaviors. By contrast, staying on task is controlled by the anterior cingulate and the striatum, and once we engage the central executive mode, staying in that state uses less energy than multitasking and actually reduces the brain’s need for glucose.

He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his "cellular function." the analogic term for the individual's individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to his society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength. That was a central idea of Odo's Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and the individual became clear. Sacrifice mught be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice -- the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind

On the way to the cake shop I kept stopping to shake the wet leaves off the soles of my brown suede Whistles boots. I bought them at Sue Ryder, the charity shop in Camden Town. [...] I know how to find good clothes in those places. First scan the rails for an awkward colour, anything that jumps out as being a bit ugly, like dirty mustard, salmon pink or olive green with a bit too much brown in it. A print with an unusual combination of colours – dark green and pink, bright orange and ultramarine – is also worth checking out. If the quality of the fabric is good, pull the garment out and check the label. Well-cut clothes can look misshapen on a hanger because they're cut to look good on the body. I'll buy a good piece if it fits, even if it doesn't sometimes. Even if it's not my style or has short sleeves, or I don't like the shape or the buttons. I learn to love it. I never tire of clothes I've bought that I've had to adjust to. It's the compromise, the awkward gap that has to be bridged that makes something, someone, lovable.

One possible motive in the murder was an article Litvinenko wrote claiming Putin was a pedophile. The article said: After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin? Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute… Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for the presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate, which showed him [having] sex with some underage boys.

The third serious problem the culture of customer service as we know it creates is turning every profession into a customer service tool to generate profits. In doing so, we risk the loss of creativity, quality, and critical thinking in many walks of life. Nowhere is this risk clearer and more damaging than viewing students at different educational institutions as customers, and nowhere this trend has been happening more rapidly than at schools, colleges, and universities, especially at private institutions. There is severe damage done to creativity and critical thinking when all students want is an A, and in fact feel entitled to get it since they (or their parents) are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend elite schools. Many educators are under enormous pressure to give students grades they do not deserve in order to avoid receiving bad student evaluations (or to ensure getting good ones). This pressure is intensifying as academic jobs become increasingly contingent and precarious, where teaching staff are hired under short contracts only renewed based on so-called ‘performance,’ which is often measured by student evaluations and enrollment. When this happens, academic and intellectual compromises and corruption increase. Colleagues at elite American universities have been pressured to give students grades no lower than a B, with the explanation that this is what is ‘expected.’ Rampant grade inflation is unethical and unacceptable. Unfortunately, when graduate instructors resist professors’ instructions to fix grades by grading according to independent criteria of intellectual merit, they may be verbally chastised or worse, fired. This humiliation not only reinforces the norm of inflating grades, it also bolsters the power of the tenured professors who instruct their teaching assistants to do it.

It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith—for their "God,"—as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents, it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting—the three things which together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times—such must pass over to the child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity.—And what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" MUST be essentially the art of deceiving—deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are!"—even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET.

In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the many, and, from compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest. But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?" Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's voice? Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy- minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer—"Top! und schlag auf schlag!" It would be just like the world we practically live in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. The world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way. Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea. The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling words: "All is needed and essential—even you with your sick soul and heart. All are one

It is, in short, the growing conviction that the Negroes cannot win—a conviction with much grounding in experience—which accounts for the new popularity of black power. So far as the ghetto Negro is concerned, this conviction expresses itself in hostility, first toward the people closest to him who have held out the most promise and failed to deliver (Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, etc.), then toward those who have proclaimed themselves his friends (the liberals and the labor movement), and finally toward the only oppressors he can see (the local storekeeper and the policeman on the corner). On the leadership level, the conviction that the Negroes cannot win takes other forms, principally the adoption of what I have called a "no-win" policy. Why bother with programs when their enactment results only in sham? Why concern ourselves with the image of the movement when nothing significant has been gained for all the sacrifices made by SNCC and CORE? Why compromise with reluctant white allies when nothing of consequence can be achieved anyway? Why indeed have anything to do with whites at all? On this last point, it is extremely important for white liberals to understand what, one gathers from their references to "racism in reverse," the President and the Vice-President of the United States do not: that there is all the difference in the world between saying, "If you don't want me, I don't want you" (which is what some proponents of black power have in effect been saying), and the statement, "Whatever you do, I don't want you" (which is what racism declares). It is, in other words, both absurd and immoral to equate the despairing response of the victim with the contemptuous assertion of the oppressor. It would, moreover, be tragic if white liberals allowed verbal hostility on the part of Negroes to drive them out of the movement or to curtail their support for civil rights. The issue was injustice before black power became popular, and the issue is still injustice.

In this short philosophical novel he completely undermined the kind of optimism about humanity and the universe that Pope and Leibniz had expressed, and he did it in such an entertaining way that the book became an instant bestseller. Wisely Voltaire left his name off the title page, otherwise its publication would have landed him in prison again for making fun of religious beliefs. Candide is the central character. His name suggests innocence and purity. At the start of the book, he is a young servant who falls hopelessly in love with his master's daughter, Cunégonde, but is chased out of her father's castle when he is caught in a compromising position with her. From then on, in a fast-moving and often fantastical tale, he travels through real and imaginary countries with his philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss, until he finally meets up with his lost love Cunégonde again, though by now she is old and ugly. In a series of comical episodes Candide and Pangloss witness terrible events and encounter a range of characters along the way, all of whom have themselves suffered terrible misfortunes. Voltaire uses the philosophy tutor, Pangloss, to spout a caricatured version of Leibniz's philosophy, which the writer then pokes fun at. Whatever happens, whether it is a natural disaster, torture, war, rape, religious persecution or slavery, Pangloss treats it as further confirmation that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Rather than causing him to rethink his beliefs, each disaster just increases his confidence that everything is for the best and this is how things had to be to produce the most perfect situation. Voltaire takes great delight in revealing Pangloss' refusal to see what is in front of him, and this is meant to mock Leibniz's optimism. But to be fair to Leibniz, his point wasn't that evil doesn't occur, but rather that the evil that does exist was needed to bring about the best possible world. It does, however, suggest that there is so much evil in the world that it is hardly likely that Leibniz was right – this can't be the minimum needed to achieve a good result. There is just too much pain and suffering in the world for that to be true. In

Frodo indeed 'failed' as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say 'simple minds' with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal is enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God. For finite judges of imperfect knowledge it must lead to the use of two different scales of 'morality'. To ourselves we must present the absolute ideal without compromise, for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. To others, in any case of which we know enough to make a judgement, we must apply a scale tempered by 'mercy': that is, since we can with good will do this without the bias inevitable in judgements of ourselves, we must estimate the limits of another's strength and weigh this against the force of particular circumstances. I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum – impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed. We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance. Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a man's effort or endurance falls short of his limits, and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached. Nonetheless, I think it can be observed in history and experience that some individuals seem to be placed in 'sacrificial' positions: situations or tasks that for perfection of solution demand powers beyond their utmost limits, even beyond all possible limits for an incarnate creature in a physical world – in which a body may be destroyed, or so maimed that it affects the mind and will. Judgement upon any such case should then depend on the motives and disposition with which he started out, and should weigh his actions against the utmost possibility of his powers, all along the road to whatever proved the breaking-point.

Thus polyvictimization or complex trauma are "developmentally adverse interpersonal traumas" (Ford, 2005) because they place the victim at risk not only for recurrent stress and psychophysiological arousal (e.g., PTSD, other anxiety disorders, depression) but also for interruptions and breakdowns in healthy psychobiological, psychological, and social development. Complex trauma not only involves shock, fear, terror, or powerlessness (either short or long term) but also, more fundamentally, constitutes a violation of the immature self and the challenge to the development of a positive and secure self, as major psychic energy is directed toward survival and defense rather than toward learning and personal development (Ford, 2009b, 2009c). Moreover, it may influence the brain's very development, structure, and functioning in both the short and long term (Lanius et al., 2010; Schore, 2009). Complex trauma often forces the child victim to substitute automatic survival tactics for adaptive self-regulation, starting at the most basic level of physical reactions (e.g., intense states of hyperarousal/agitation or hypoarousal/immobility) and behavioral (e.g., aggressive or passive/avoidant responses) that can become so automatic and habitual that the child's emotional and cognitive development are derailed or distorted. What is more, self-integrity is profoundly shaken, as the child victim incorporates the "lessons of abuse" into a view of him or herself as bad, inadequate, disgusting, contaminated and deserving of mistreatment and neglect. Such misattributions and related schema about self and others are some of the most common and robust cognitive and assumptive consequences of chronic childhood abuse (as well as other forms of interpersonal trauma) and are especially debilitating to healthy development and relationships (Cole & Putnam, 1992; McCann & Pearlman, 1992). Because the violation occurs in an interpersonal context that carries profound significance for personal development, relationships become suspect and a source of threat and fear rather than of safety and nurturance. In vulnerable children, complex trauma causes compromised attachment security, self-integrity and ultimately self-regulation. Thus it constitutes a threat not only to physical but also to psychological survival - to the development of the self and the capacity to regulate emotions (Arnold & Fisch, 2011). For example, emotional abuse by an adult caregiver that involves systematic disparagement, blame and shame of a child ("You worthless piece of s-t"; "You shouldn't have been born"; "You are the source of all of my problems"; "I should have aborted you"; "If you don't like what I tell you, you can go hang yourself") but does not involve sexual or physical violation or life threat is nevertheless psychologically damaging. Such bullying and antipathy on the part of a primary caregiver or other family members, in addition to maltreatment and role reversals that are found in many dysfunctional families, lead to severe psychobiological dysregulation and reactivity (Teicher, Samson, Polcari, & McGreenery, 2006).

And now I come to the first positively important point which I wish to make. Never were as many men of a decidedly empiricist proclivity in existence as there are at the present day. Our children, one may say, are almost born scientific. But our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout. Now take a man of this type, and let him be also a philosophic amateur, unwilling to mix a hodge-podge system after the fashion of a common layman, and what does he find his situation to be, in this blessed year of our Lord 1906? He wants facts; he wants science; but he also wants a religion. And being an amateur and not an independent originator in philosophy he naturally looks for guidance to the experts and professionals whom he finds already in the field. A very large number of you here present, possibly a majority of you, are amateurs of just this sort. Now what kinds of philosophy do you find actually offered to meet your need? You find an empirical philosophy that is not religious enough, and a religious philosophy that is not empirical enough. If you look to the quarter where facts are most considered you find the whole tough-minded program in operation, and the 'conflict between science and religion' in full blast. The romantic spontaneity and courage are gone, the vision is materialistic and depressing. Ideals appear as inert by-products of physiology; what is higher is explained by what is lower and treated forever as a case of 'nothing but'—nothing but something else of a quite inferior sort. You get, in short, a materialistic universe, in which only the tough-minded find themselves congenially at home.If now, on the other hand, you turn to the religious quarter for consolation, and take counsel of the tender-minded philosophies, what do you find? Religious philosophy in our day and generation is, among us English-reading people, of two main types. One of these is more radical and aggressive, the other has more the air of fighting a slow retreat. By the more radical wing of religious philosophy I mean the so-called transcendental idealism of the Anglo-Hegelian school, the philosophy of such men as Green, the Cairds, Bosanquet, and Royce. This philosophy has greatly influenced the more studious members of our protestant ministry. It is pantheistic, and undoubtedly it has already blunted the edge of the traditional theism in protestantism at large. That theism remains, however. It is the lineal descendant, through one stage of concession after another, of the dogmatic scholastic theism still taught rigorously in the seminaries of the catholic church. For a long time it used to be called among us the philosophy of the Scottish school. It is what I meant by the philosophy that has the air of fighting a slow retreat. Between the encroachments of the hegelians and other philosophers of the 'Absolute,' on the one hand, and those of the scientific evolutionists and agnostics, on the other, the men that give us this kind of a philosophy, James Martineau, Professor Bowne, Professor Ladd and others, must feel themselves rather tightly squeezed. Fair-minded and candid as you like, this philosophy is not radical in temper. It is eclectic, a thing of compromises, that seeks a modus vivendi above all things. It accepts the facts of darwinism, the facts of cerebral physiology, but it does nothing active or enthusiastic with them. It lacks the victorious and aggressive note. It lacks prestige in consequence; whereas absolutism has a certain prestige due to the more radical style of it.

The tactical situation seems simple enough. Thanks to Marx’s prophecy, the Communists knew for certain that misery must soon increase. They also knew that the party could not win the confidence of the workers without fighting for them, and with them, for an improvement of their lot. These two fundamental assumptions clearly determined the principles of their general tactics. Make the workers demand their share, back them up in every particular episode in their unceasing fight for bread and shelter. Fight with them tenaciously for the fulfilment of their practical demands, whether economic or political. Thus you will win their confidence. At the same time, the workers will learn that it is impossible for them to better their lot by these petty fights, and that nothing short of a wholesale revolution can bring about an improvement. For all these petty fights are bound to be unsuccessful; we know from Marx that the capitalists simply cannot continue to compromise and that, ultimately, misery must increase. Accordingly, the only result—but a valuable one—of the workers’ daily fight against their oppressors is an increase in their class consciousness; it is that feeling of unity which can be won only in battle, together with a desperate knowledge that only revolution can help them in their misery. When this stage is reached, then the hour has struck for the final show-down. This is the theory and the Communists acted accordingly. At first they support the workers in their fight to improve their lot. But, contrary to all expectations and prophecies, the fight is successful. The demands are granted. Obviously, the reason is that they had been too modest. Therefore one must demand more. But the demands are granted again44. And as misery decreases, the workers become less embittered, more ready to bargain for wages than to plot for revolution. Now the Communists find that their policy must be reversed. Something must be done to bring the law of increasing misery into operation. For instance, colonial unrest must be stirred up (even where there is no chance of a successful revolution), and with the general purpose of counteracting the bourgeoisification of the workers, a policy fomenting catastrophes of all sorts must be adopted. But this new policy destroys the confidence of the workers. The Communists lose their members, with the exception of those who are inexperienced in real political fights. They lose exactly those whom they describe as the ‘vanguard of the working class’; their tacitly implied principle: ‘The worse things are, the better they are, since misery must precipitate revolution’, makes the workers suspicious—the better the application of this principle, the worse are the suspicions entertained by the workers. For they are realists; to obtain their confidence, one must work to improve their lot. Thus the policy must be reversed again: one is forced to fight for the immediate betterment of the workers’ lot and to hope at the same time for the opposite. With this, the ‘inner contradictions’ of the theory produce the last stage of confusion. It is the stage when it is hard to know who is the traitor, since treachery may be faithfulness and faithfulness treachery. It is the stage when those who followed the party not simply because it appeared to them (rightly, I am afraid) as the only vigorous movement with humanitarian ends, but especially because it was a movement based on a scientific theory, must either leave it, or sacrifice their intellectual integrity; for they must now learn to believe blindly in some authority. Ultimately, they must become mystics—hostile to reasonable argument. It seems that it is not only capitalism which is labouring under inner contradictions that threaten to bring about its downfall …

The vampire Dimitri calmly looked up at Reese and smiled. “Commander, everything gets easier over time,” he answered. “Especially if you have all the time that there is. And I do. As a human, you live such a short span of time that you do not learn that life is a continuous battle with one enemy—and that compromise is the only way to ultimately win. Those that do not understand this and think they can control everything; fall to the death of illusion.

No compulsion is there in religion. Rectitude has become clear from error. (Q2:256) We can dub this the ‘no compulsion’ verse. It does not compromise the notion of absolute religious truth, but it strongly suggests that the true religion can nonetheless coexist with any and all forms of false religion.

But it is an error ever to compromise on hiring quality. A bad hire is toxic, not only destroying their own performance, but also dragging down the performance, morale, and energy of those around them. If being down a person means everyone else has to work harder in the short term, just remind them of the last jerk they had to work with.

But in the years before the council, in a typical American parish, that ancient liturgy was too often approached haphazardly, celebrated carelessly, treated as an obligation to be rushed through as quickly as possible. After the council, of course, the introduction of a new streamlined liturgy gave immeasurably more scope to the casual approach. In Why Catholics Can’t Sing, Thomas Day comments: We can be reasonably sure that the Last Supper did not begin with the words, “Good evening, apostles.” Intuition tells us that John the Baptist did not cry out in the wilderness, “Repent, sin no more, and havernice day.” Common sense tells us that there is something immensely wrong and contradictory about starting off a ritual with “Good Morning.” We might even say that the laity in the pews “short circuits” when greeted this way at Mass. The church building, the music, and the celebrant in flowing robes all seem to say, “This is a ritual,” an event out of the ordinary. Then, the “Good Morning” intrudes itself and indicates that this is really a business meeting and not a liturgy, after all. Today, after more than a full generation of liturgical experimentation, the integrity of the liturgy can be compromised by two opposite dangers: caring too little about the established rubrics or caring too much.

Your laptop is a note in a symphony currently being played by an orchestra of incalculable size. It’s a very small part of a much greater whole. Most of its capacity resides beyond its hard shell. It maintains its function only because a vast array of other technologies are currently and harmoniously at play. It is fed, for example, by a power grid whose function is invisibly dependent on the stability of a myriad of complex physical, biological, economic and interpersonal systems. The factories that make its parts are still in operation. The operating system that enables its function is based on those parts, and not on others yet to be created. Its video hardware runs the technology expected by the creative people who post their content on the web. Your laptop is in communication with a certain, specified ecosystem of other devices and web servers. And, finally, all this is made possible by an even less visible element: the social contract of trust—the interconnected and fundamentally honest political and economic systems that make the reliable electrical grid a reality. This interdependency of part on whole, invisible in systems that work, becomes starkly evident in systems that don’t. The higher-order, surrounding systems that enable personal computing hardly exist at all in corrupt, third-world countries, so that the power lines, electrical switches, outlets, and all the other entities so hopefully and concretely indicative of such a grid are absent or compromised, and in fact make little contribution to the practical delivery of electricity to people’s homes and factories. This makes perceiving the electronic and other devices that electricity theoretically enables as separate, functional units frustrating, at minimum, and impossible, at worst. This is partly because of technical insufficiency: the systems simply don’t work. But it is also in no small part because of the lack of trust characteristic of systemically corrupt societies. To put it another way: What you perceive as your computer is like a single leaf, on a tree, in a forest—or, even more accurately, like your fingers rubbing briefly across that leaf. A single leaf can be plucked from a branch. It can be perceived, briefly, as a single, self-contained entity—but that perception misleads more than clarifies. In a few weeks, the leaf will crumble and dissolve. It would not have been there at all, without the tree. It cannot continue to exist, in the absence of the tree. This is the position of our laptops in relation to the world. So much of what they are resides outside their boundaries that the screened devices we hold on our laps can only maintain their computer-like façade for a few short years. Almost everything we see and hold is like that, although often not so evidently

Many of the traits benefit both walking and running, but some, such as a large gluteus maximus, the nuchal ligament, big semicircular canals, and short toes don’t affect how well we walk and are primarily useful when we run, which means they are adaptations to running. These traits suggest that there was strong selection in the genus Homo not just for walking but also for running, presumably for scavenging and hunting. Consider also that a few of these adaptations, especially long legs and short toes, compromise our ability to climb trees. Selection for running may have caused the human genus to become the first primates that are clumsy in trees. In short, the benefits of acquiring meat through scavenging and hunting account for many transformations of the human body first evident in early Homo that enabled early hunter-gatherers not only to walk but also to run long distances. Whether

They must constantly negotiate among their own moral and spiritual instincts, the interests of their institutions, their personal concerns about their own salaries and retirement accounts, and professional and social status. In short, they must master the art of ethical compromise as a matter of vocational survival

When you think your partner is not doing his or her share, ask yourself whether being resentful and faultfinding will help you or your relationship. •​Practice the Three A's: awareness, appreciation, acknowledgment: 1.​Become aware of your partner's efforts. Try to notice the little things he or she does for the good of the relationship. 2.​Appreciate that those efforts demand compromise and sacrifice and that your partner loves you enough to try. 3.​Acknowledge your partner's contributions. Don’t keep your appreciation to yourself. •​After you establish a track record using the three A's, you might find that your partner's behaviour spontaneously changes. Sometimes people do things you don’t like because they don’t feel appreciated. •​If you still feel short-changed by your partner's lack of effort, ask yourself if your objections are fair and reasonable. •​If they are, try to express any hurt and frustration you might feel without sounding critical. •​Tell your partner what changes you would like him to make. Ask if he thinks these changes are fair and reasonable, and if he is willing to make the effort. •​Ask him if there are any changes he would like to see you make.

Think Skeptic. Expect the first reaction of others to be negative. The forces of Complexity will inevitably tell you that something can’t be done, even if the truth is that your request simply requires extra effort. You’ll probably achieve better results if you believe more in the talent of people to work miracles than in those who are quick to provide negative answers. Don’t allow the discouragement of others to force compromise upon your ideas. Push. If you can’t get satisfaction with one person or vendor, move to another. If there was one area in which Steve Jobs had a well-deserved reputation for being impossible, this was it. He was relentless about executing ideas and demanding that people perform. Take pride in your independence and objectivity too. See facts and opinions in context. Definitely consider the expertise of those who provide counsel, but evaluate those opinions against things that may be beyond the expert’s vision—like your long-term goals. Steve Jobs knew that the short-term cost, even if it’s large, is often outweighed by the future benefit. Real leaders have the ability to grasp the context and decide accordingly. Simplicity isn’t afraid to act on Common Sense, even when it runs counter to an expert’s opinion.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough and Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. “Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible. It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. […] The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. […] An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. […] Even hypocrisy is a powerful safeguard. The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig, whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England. He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.

REMEMBERING THE WORDS OF MY LATE FATHER The time is 03.16 am the UK time and I have been thinking of you lately, nyana kaBhixa, Mngwevu, Tshangisa, Zulu, Skhomo, Mhlatyana, Rudulu. I listen and hear nothing but the echoes of your words of wisdom and encouragement in my daily life. Your priceless love for me and my late sister was the most solid foundation for our lives and the most nourishment of our souls which is still the pillar of the unbeatable strength that helps me stand tall against all odds. You always told us that life is a double-edged sword, it’s beautiful and enjoyable but there are times when it stings like a bee and the best thing to do is to take a cautious approach and remember that there will always be some victories along the way. Here are some of your words that continue to give me the ability to navigate throughout the challenges of life: . Know who you are,never compromise and sell yourself short . Stay authentic and never change because authenticity stiffens your backbone. . Always stand up for the truth no matter how high is the cost . Never eat like there is no tomorrow because you will not be able to survive in the times of famine. . Never sit too close to the fire because not every place is always has that kind of comfort. . Be aware of your surroundings and make it the part of your daily routine. . Always try to pull yourself together and remember that there are places where your tears will mean nothing to certain people. . Always remember that you were created to overcome every obstacle and to rise above every challenge. And never keep silent in the presence of your adversaries. . Always remember to share the little you have with those who are in need. . Never be afraid to say no when you have to say so. I give God all the glory for the choice He made before the foundation of the earth for choosing you to be my earthly father and I’m grateful for the years He allowed us to spend together on this planet. Thank you so much Tata for being a good and faithful steward of my life and thank you for the spirit of resilience that runs through the veins of every Xhosa heart. Lala ngoxolo Tshangisa. Love you so much.

I devote Chapter 5 to the issue of a ‘chastened individualism’, as the existentialists try to conceive of social solidarity in a manner that will enhance rather than compromise individual freedom and responsibility, which remain non-negotiable.

Every time my seven-year-old daughter puts on a pair of shorts, I remember the way we used to be. I think of my Hmong grandmother who came to this country in the autumn of her life, too old to shift with its seasons. My Hmong American mother who came to this country young enough to compromise pieces and parts of herself so that she could work and care for her children through the harshest of seasons. And I think of myself, a girl wanting desperately to celebrate spring and summer, to be strong for her mother and her grandmother, and who tried unsuccessfully in many ways to fit in. Now that Grandma is gone, my mother is an old woman, and I am a working mother myself, it is only in my memories that we get to be together the way we were then. My Asian American girl loves shorts and T-shirts, her thin legs often darkened by bruises from her runs around me, beside me, and often ahead of me. From the distance of nearly twenty years, I wish I could have told that young girl yearning to let her legs breathe free that all of our lives in America were just beginning, that where we were was only one part of our story. I wish I could have told her that her family was as good as they knew how to be to each other, and that in their own ways they were trying to help each other, not hurt. I want to tell the girl I used to be that these first years of life in America would teach her how to love across space and time, to one day stand strong in her family’s discomforts, and give her the power and the ability to declare them all: new Americans.

Life was short, cruel, and worth the effort, and compromise and accommodation were easy habits.

He smiled and left me to my misgivings about Paris Denard. The man had received too many accolades for too little suffering and now wore them like medals of valor everywhere he went. A little more notoriety and his ego would bring him one short step away from the ugly little snare that waits and watches for those too fond of themselves. It is the same nasty little trap that lures the nouveau rich or puerile famous. As fame and notoriety take hold, suddenly you are surrounded with an ample variety of overindulgences available to you most any time. Innocently you begin sampling the ones that do not offend your morals or ethics while secretly eyeing those that do. After a while, the lines become blurred and they all become indulgences that you rightly deserve, a normal part of the avant-garde life style you lead. The compromises become greater and greater until you are so possessed by overindulgence that you are a person owned by indiscretions, and those who provide them. That is the trap. You lose your self, one sin at a time, until those who specialize in sin can make you serve them and do most anything they require you to do to further their own aims. It is at that point many wealthy or famous individuals decide there is no going back, though they are unwilling to continue. They help fill the news and star magazines with the regretful obituaries of people who gave so much, and who were so dearly loved it seemed unthinkable that they took their own lives. They will always be remembered. There will always be gratitude.

Caroline’s project faces extreme uncertainty: there had never been a volunteer campaign of this magnitude at HP before. How confident should she be that she knows the real reasons people aren’t volunteering? Most important, how much does she really know about how to change the behavior of hundreds of thousand people in more than 170 countries? Barlerin’s goal is to inspire her colleagues to make the world a better place. Looked at that way, her plan seems full of untested assumptions—and a lot of vision. In accordance with traditional management practices, Barlerin is spending time planning, getting buy-in from various departments and other managers, and preparing a road map of initiatives for the first eighteen months of her project. She also has a strong accountability framework with metrics for the impact her project should have on the company over the next four years. Like many entrepreneurs, she has a business plan that lays out her intentions nicely. Yet despite all that work, she is—so far—creating one-off wins and no closer to knowing if her vision will be able to scale. One assumption, for example, might be that the company’s long-standing values included a commitment to improving the community but that recent economic trouble had resulted in an increased companywide strategic focus on short-term profitability. Perhaps longtime employees would feel a desire to reaffirm their values of giving back to the community by volunteering. A second assumption could be that they would find it more satisfying and therefore more sustainable to use their actual workplace skills in a volunteer capacity, which would have a greater impact on behalf of the organizations to which they donated their time. Also lurking within Caroline’s plans are many practical assumptions about employees’ willingness to take the time to volunteer, their level of commitment and desire, and the way to best reach them with her message. The Lean Startup model offers a way to test these hypotheses rigorously, immediately, and thoroughly. Strategic planning takes months to complete; these experiments could begin immediately. By starting small, Caroline could prevent a tremendous amount of waste down the road without compromising her overall vision. Here’s what it might look like if Caroline were to treat her project as an experiment.

If you’re like most people, a string of nerve-racking incidents keeps you in fight-or-flight response—and out of homeostasis—a large part of the time. Maybe the car cutting you off is the only actual life-threatening situation you encounter all day, but the traffic on the way to work, the pressure of preparing for a big presentation, the argument you had with your spouse, the credit-card bill that came in the mail, the crashing of your computer hard drive, and the new gray hair you noticed in the mirror keep the stress hormones circulating in your body on a near-constant basis. Between remembering stressful experiences from the past and anticipating stressful situations coming up in your future, all these repetitive short-term stresses blur together into long-term stress. Welcome to the 21st-century version of living in survival mode. In fight-or-flight mode, life-sustaining energy is mobilized so that the body can either run or fight. But when there isn’t a return to homeostasis (because you keep perceiving a threat), vital energy is lost in the system. You have less energy in your internal environment for cell growth and repair, long-term building projects on a cellular level, and healing when that energy is being channeled elsewhere. The cells shut down, they no longer communicate with one another, and they become “selfish.” It’s not time for routine maintenance (let alone for making improvements); it’s time for defense. It’s every cell for itself, so the collective community of cells working together becomes fractured. The immune and endocrine systems (among others) become weakened as genes in those related cells are compromised when informational signals from outside the cells are turned off. It’s like living in a country where 98 percent of the resources go toward defense, and nothing is left for schools, libraries, road building and repair, communication systems, growing of food, and so on. Roads develop potholes that aren’t fixed. Schools suffer budget cuts, so students wind up learning less. Social welfare programs that took care of the poor and the elderly have to close down. And there’s not enough food to feed the masses. Not surprisingly, then, long-term stress has been linked to anxiety, depression, digestive problems, memory loss, insomnia, hypertension, heart disease, strokes, cancer, ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis, colds, flu, aging acceleration, allergies, body pain, chronic fatigue, infertility, impotence, asthma, hormonal issues, skin rashes, hair loss, muscle spasms, and diabetes, to name just a few conditions (all of which, by the way, are the result of epigenetic changes). No organism in nature is designed to withstand the effects of long-term stress.

Luxo Jr. was the breakthrough,” Steve told me many years later. If Steve ever was starstruck, it was by Lasseter, whose artistry seemed to be irrefutable evidence of what Steve believed to be the most important attribute of computers: that they were tools that could unleash and enhance human creativity. Despite his boyish ways (his office is stuffed with so many toys it could double as a Pixar museum, and his wardrobe consists exclusively of blue jeans and hundreds of loud, Hawaiian-style print shirts), Lasseter was a confident grown-up, and not persnickety in any way. While he never looked to Steve for creative advice on his short features, he calmly listened to his boss’s opinions, before going ahead with his own plans anyway. But he made compromises when needed, too, rather than insisting on perfection: when he couldn’t prepare a polished version of a short called Tin Toy in time for SIGGRAPH, he simply showed what he could and filled in the rest with line drawings. Lasseter

Language The clichéd image of an alien emerging from a flying saucer and declaring ‘Take me to your leader’ highlights one problem in alien narratives. As soon as aliens speak, their otherness becomes compromised, because we associate language with a way of life and view it as one of the defining characteristics of humanity. One way out of this impasse in early SF was to use the convenience of an instant translation device.

Consider the peculiarities of the Dixie cup test. Few of us feel disgust swallowing the saliva within our mouths. We do it all the time. But the second the saliva is expelled from the body it becomes something foreign and alien. It is no longer saliva—it is spit. Consequently, although there seems to be little physical difference between swallowing the saliva in your mouth versus spiting it out and quickly drinking it, there is a vast psychological difference between the two acts. And disgust regulates the experience, marking the difference. We don’t mind swallowing what is on the “inside.” But we are disgusted by swallowing something that is “outside,” even if that something was on the “inside” only a second ago. In short, disgust is a boundary psychology. Disgust marks objects as exterior and alien. The second the saliva leaves the body and crosses the boundary of selfhood it is foul, it is “exterior,” it is Other. And this, I realized, is the same psychological dynamic at the heart of the conflict in Matthew 9. Specifically, how are we to draw the boundaries of exclusion and inclusion in the life of the church? Sacrifice—the purity impulse—marks off a zone of holiness, admitting the “clean” and expelling the “unclean.” Mercy, by contrast, crosses those purity boundaries. Mercy blurs the distinction, bringing clean and unclean into contact. Thus the tension. One impulse—holiness and purity—erects boundaries, while the other impulse—mercy and hospitality—crosses and ignores those boundaries. And it’s very hard, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see this, to both erect a boundary and dismantle that boundary at the very same time. One has to choose. And as Jesus and the Pharisees make different choices in Matthew 9 there seems little by way of compromise. They stand on opposite sides of a psychological (clean versus unclean), social (inclusion versus exclusion), and theological (saints versus sinners) boundary.

there are a wide variety of ways to solve these problems. Some common tactics include: Gathering data to decide what to do. Leveraging the support and expertise of people around you. Discussing and setting team priorities. Understanding the emotions of those around you. Thinking about what the “right” thing to do is (based on ethics, what’s best for the customer, etc). Breaking down the situation, focusing on what you know, and understanding more about what you know. Mitigating risk. Being honest and straightforward. Solving the problem creatively or thinking outside the box. Compromising. Balancing short-term and long-term tradeoffs. Managing the expectations of coworkers and customers.

Never compromise your integrity. It’s all you have.

A dybbuk, as tradition tells us, is a miserable soul that cannot progress to a heavenly rest and instead stays on Earth and takes over someone else’s body, displacing the person’s soul in order for the miserable soul to do its final bidding. If an aspirator at the factory was malfunctioning, Zelig said there was a dybbuk in the works. If a group of cables all started snapping in short succession, there was a dybbuk in the works.

American democracy is backsliding in the twenty-first century. The root cause is the combination of three factors. First, political tribalism that enflames age-old cognitive biases. Second, brand-new social-media platforms that transform how people publish, consume, and process information. And third, long-entrenched structural deficiencies, like the two-party duopoly, that distort the US political system. The combination of these three components is a flywheel spinning faster and faster every day. Social media exacerbates tribalism by feeding users confirmatory and incendiary political news. The two-party political system compounds the resulting irrationality by pitting two juggernauts against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry that stifles and deforms the marketplace of ideas. The polarized political debate, in turn, turbocharges over-stimulated tribal biases with partisan falsehoods (e.g., Trump colluded with Russia to hack the DNC’s email servers), gross caricatures (e.g., Hillary Clinton is a crooked felon), and abhorrent stupidities (e.g., Barack Obama was born in Kenya). And so the flywheel spins. This throbbing frenzy erodes respect for the Constitutional principles and essential traditions of American democracy examined in Part One—a respect that is necessary for them to function. Indeed, these principles and traditions aren’t laws of physics; they are rules for structuring society that require good faith, compromise, and broad consent to work. And they will eventually disintegrate if the American people continue to ignore them while fixating instead on short-term political battles.

Melody,” he says my name in a mixture of exasperation and frustration, but it still makes me prickle with excitement. He hasn’t forgotten it. Hasn’t forgotten me. “We’re on a tight deadline. You can’t come by and get in the way while we’re working.” “Then I’ll come by after hours,” I compromise easily, and then add my most charming smile as I glance up at him from under the brim of my big floppy hat. “As long as you’ll go to dinner with me so we can catch up.” Please say yes. Please say you miss me. Please say you want me. Please say you think about me as much as I think about you. Brux’s hard mouth flattens into an unforgiving line. “No.” I push aside the twinge of hurt that his refusal gives me. He’s like a hard coating over a bit of chocolate. I have to break that shell before I get to the sweetness inside, and I’m not going to give up. “Then I guess we’re done here. You go back to work and I’ll go back to scrapping.

A still more sobering social media example of a different kind, one so important that it could well have influenced the presidential election of 2016, was the cooperation between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm, was largely the creation of Steve Bannon and his billionaire sponsor, Robert Mercer. One former co-executive referred to Cambridge Analytica as “Bannon’s arsenal of weaponry to wage a culture war on America using military strategies.” Cambridge Analytica combined a particularly vicious version of traditional “dirty tricks” with cutting-edge social media savvy. The dirty tricks, according to its former CEO, Alexander Nix, included bribery, sting operations, the use of prostitutes, and “honey traps” (usually involving sexual behavior, sometimes even initiated for the purposes of obtaining compromising photographs) to discredit politicians on whom it conducted opposition research. The social media savvy included advanced methods developed by the Psychometrics Centre of Cambridge University. Aleksandr Kogan, a young Russian American psychologist working there, created an app that enabled him to gain access to elaborate private information on more than fifty million Facebook users, information specifically identifying personality traits that influenced behavior. Kogan had strong links to Facebook, which failed to block his harvesting of that massive data; he then passed the data along to Cambridge Analytica. Kogan also taught at the Saint Petersburg State University in Russia; and given the links between Cambridge Analytica and Russian groups, the material was undoubtedly made available to Russian intelligence. So extensive was Cambridge Analytica’s collection of data that Nix could boast, “Today in the United States we have somewhere close to 4 or 5 thousand data points on every individual…. So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people.” Whatever his exaggeration, he was describing a new means of milieu control that was invisible and potentially manipulable in the extreme. Beyond Cambridge Analytica or Kogan, Russian penetration of American social media has come to be recognized as a vast enterprise involving extensive falsification and across-the-board anti-Clinton messages, with special attention given to African American men in order to discourage them from voting. The Russians apparently reached millions of people and surely had a considerable influence on the outcome of the election. More generally, one can say that social media platforms can now create a totality of their own, and can make themselves available to would-be owners of reality by means of massive deception, distortion, and promulgation of falsehoods. The technology itself promotes mystification and becomes central to creating and sustaining cultism. Trump is the first president to have available to him these developments in social media. His stance toward the wild conspiracism I have mentioned is to stop short of total allegiance to them, but at the same time to facilitate them and call them forth in his tweets and harbor their followers at his rallies. All of this suggests not only that Trump and the new social media are made for each other, but also that the problem will long outlive Trump’s brief, but all too long, moment on the historical stage.

Almost any positive good [positive liberty] can be described in terms of freedom from something [negative liberty]. Health is freedom from disease; happiness is a life free from flaws and miseries; equality is freedom from advantage and disadvantage.. Faced with this flexibility, the theorist will need to prioritize some freedoms and discount others. At its extreme we may get the view that only some particular kind of life makes for ‘real freedom’. Real freedom might, for instance, be freedom the bondage of desire, as in Buddhism and Stoicism. Or it might be a kind of self-realization or self-perfection only possible in a community of similarly self-realized individuals, pointing us towards a communitarian, socialist, or even communist ideal. To a laissez-faire capitalist, it is freedom from more than minimal necessary political and legal interference in the pursuit of profit. But the rhetoric of freedom will typically just disguise the merits or demerits of the political order being promoted. The flexibility of the term ‘freedom’ undoubtedly plays a huge role in the rhetoric of political demands, particularly when the language of rights mingles with the language of freedom. ‘We have a right to freedom from…’ is not only a good way, but the best way to start a moral or political demand. Freedom is a dangerous word, just because it is an inspirational one. The modern emphasis on freedom is problematically associated with a particular self-image. This is the 'autonomous' or self-governing and self-driven individual. This individual has the right to make his or her own decisions. Interference or restraint is lack of respect, and everyone has a right to respect. For this individual, the ultimate irrationality would be to alienate his freedom, for instance by joining a monastery that requires unquestioning obedience to a superior, or selling himself into slavery to another. The self-image may be sustained by the thought that each individual has the same share of human reason, and an equal right to deploy this reason in the conduct of his or her own life. Yet the 'autonomous' individual, gloriously independent in his decision-making, can easily seem to be a fantasy. Not only the Grand Unifying Pessimisms, but any moderately sober reflection on human life and human societies, suggest that we are creatures easily swayed, constantly infected by the opinions of others, lacking critical self-understanding, easily gripped by fantastical hopes and ambitions. Our capacity for self-government is spasmodic, and even while we preen ourselves on our critical and independent, free and rational decisions, we are slaves of fashion and opinion and social and cultural forces of which we are ignorant. A little awareness of ethics will make us mistrustful of sound-bite-sized absolutes. Even sacred freedoms meet compromises, and take us into a world of balances. Free speech is sacred. Yet the law does not protect fraudulent speech, libellous speech, speech describing national secrets, speech inciting racial and other hatreds, speech inciting panic in crowded places, and so on. In return, though, we gain freedom from fraud, from misrepresentation of our characters and our doings, from enemy incursions, from civil unrest, from arbitrary risks of panic in crowds. For sure, there will always be difficult cases. There are websites giving people simple recipes on how to make bombs in their kitchens. Do we want a conception of free speech that protects those? What about the freedom of the rest of us to live our lives without a significant risk of being blown up by a crank? It would be nice if there were a utilitarian calculus enabling us to measure the costs and benefits of permission and suppression, but it is hard to find one.

To retrain the imagination and the natural impulses to resist the murky short-term delights of the pagan world is harder still. To make and sustain marriages of genuine mutual submission is perhaps hardest of all. Compromises and second-best solutions are easy. To go for the full version of discipleship is to sign on for spiritual warfare.

BECAUSE MY FATHER WASN’T allowed to hunt hippies, he decided to settle for hunting deer instead. It was a good compromise, all things considered. Deer were the pacifists of the animal kingdom. They sat around doing weeds all day and didn’t even try to get jobs. The males of the species pranced and ate salad and had a hundred kids they didn’t know about. In November, a long line of them marched to the polls, leaves held delicately in their mouths, each marked with the name of the Green Party candidate. A deer, in short, was a peace sign made out of meat, and the only way to fight it was with bullets.

Anxiety provokes us to choose short-term gains to compromise long-term benefits.