Consumed By Deception Quotes

...I told you how different my love is, how dark it can get, but I do love you, more than I've ever loved anyone in my life. I don't only need you; I also genuinely cannot live without you and the light you bring to my darkness. I know you deserve better, but I'm unable to let you go, so I'll try my best to be worthy of you, Lenochka.

humans have an evolved capacity to engage in self-deception in order to navigate through life in a delusional state of blissful ignorance.

i mean talk about decadence," he declared, "how decadent can a society get? Look at it this way. This country's probably the psychiatric, psychoanalytical capital of the world. Old Freud himself could never've dreamed up a more devoted bunch of disciples than the population of the United States - isn't that right? Our whole damn culture is geared to it; it's the new religion; it's everybody's intellectual and spiritual sugar-tit. And for all that, look what happens when a man really does blow his top. Call the Troopers, get him out of sight quick, hustle him off and lock him up before he wakes the neighbors. Christ's sake, when it comes to any kind of showdown we're still in the Middle Ages. It's as if everybody'd made this tacit agreement to live in a state of total self-deception. The hell with reality! Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink and baby blue; let's all be good consumers and have a lot of Togetherness and bring our children up in a bath of sentimentality -- and if old reality ever does pop out and say Boo we'll all get busy and pretend it never happened.

Is it worth it?” “Is what worth it?” “Losing everything for her?” A small smile grazes my lips. “Absolutely.

Rereading has three strikes against it. It is time consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery of the content. The hours immersed in rereading can seem like due diligence, but the amount of study time is no measure of mastery.

She’ll always be my lone rose—the resilient rose that I’d pluck from the side of the road over and over again, even if her thorns caused me to bleed.

She’s my wife. My son’s mother. Fucking mine. And I’ll go through hell itself if it means keeping her there.

Anxiety is freedom’s possibility; this anxiety alone is, through faith, absolutely formative, since it consumes all finite ends, discovers all their deceptions.

Adrian’s guard is down slightly when he’s inside me or after he’s fucked me, and I’m not above using that to my advantage.

The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. In fact, personal style, defined by the commodities we buy or consume, has become a compensation for our loss of democratic equality. We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. Once you get there, those questions are no longer asked.

You might have forgotten a few things, so let me remind you, Lia. You are my wife. Fucking mine. That means you don’t protect another man in my damn presence. No matter how much you try to shield him, I’ll find the bastard and kill him. Then, I’ll keep my promise and fuck you in his blood.

Then don’t say you’ll leave me again. You’re my last stop and I plan to stay, not move on.” “You’re my last stop, too.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Wine is a complicated elixir, full of subtle flavors only an expert can truly distinguish, and experienced tasters are impervious to deception. THE TRUTH: Wine experts and consumers can be fooled by altering their expectations.

I wish it could've been different between the two of us. I wish I were the man you deserve instead of the villain you're got.

One day, she'll realize that the world we live in doesn't matter. We're the only one who do.

NINA Your life is beautiful. TRIGORIN I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!

Note that having a large brain is biologically costly: the brain is an expensive organ to run, and large ones consume many precious calories (the human brain accounts for a whopping 20 percent of our energy expenditure).

LOVE: Deception of the flesh and damage to the spirit. Disease of the soul, atrophy of the brain, weakening of the heart, corruption of the senses, poetic lies from which one gets ferociously inebriated two or three times a day in order to consume this precious but stupid life more quickly. And yet I would prefer to die of love. Its the only swindler, after Judas, that can kill with a kiss.

THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case. In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic." Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight. So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic. Suzy Kassem, Truth Is Crying

Obsession. It starts with a spark. A flicker. At the strike of a match. Lying dormant in most of us, obsession feasts on the fumes, breathes in the smoky scent, curing around and in on itself. Building. We pet it, nurse it into existence. It is ours. All ours. A coveted perfection. And when it refuses to be ignored, it rages. It roars to life. A building inferno. Consuming. We are but pawns to its deceptive power. Though we attempt to guide it, caress it tenderly into a loving beauty, it can not be controlled. It’s a haunted, vengeful lover. Like a wildfire devouring life within it’s path, we can only follow it’s carnal trail.

The economic system is filled with trickery, and everyone needs to know that. We all have to navigate this system in order to maintain our dignity and integrity, and we all have to find inspiration to go on despite craziness all around us. We wrote this book for consumers, who need to be vigilant against a multitude of tricks played on them. We wrote it for businesspeople, who feel depressed at the cynicism of some of their colleagues and trapped into following suit out of economic necessity. We wrote it for government officials, who undertake the usually thankless task of regulating business. We wrote it for the volunteers, the philanthropists, the opinion leaders, who work on the side of integrity. And we wrote it for young people, looking ahead to a lifetime of work and wondering how they can find personal meaning in it. All these people will benefit from a study of phishing equilibrium—of economic forces that build manipulation and deception into the system unless we take courageous steps to fight it. We also need stories of heroes, people who out of personal integrity (rather than for economic gain) have managed to keep deception in our economy down to livable levels. We will tell plenty of stories of these heroes.

Everything about her will be only a part of my memories.

There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance. The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies. The signal is an attack.

[Roger] “Do you know how amazingly beautiful you are to me?” “As beautiful as you are to me.” She slid her gaze down then back up with one of those secret smiles that played havoc with a man’s mind. He shook his head. “Nah, I couldn’t be, because you’d be insane with your need to just watch me. You’d ache every moment to just touch me. Your nights would be consumed with dreams of me and you’d live every moment just to love me.

And for all that, look what happens when a man really does blow his top. Call the Troopers, get him out of sight quick, hustle him off and lock him up before he wakes the neighbors. Christ's sake, when it comes to any kind of a showdown we're still in the Middle Ages. It's as if everybody'd made this tacit agreement to live in a state of total self-deception. The hell with reality! Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink and baby blue; let's all be good consumers and have a lot of Togetherness and bring our children up in a bath of sentimentality—Daddy's a great man because he makes a living, Mummy's a great woman because she's stuck by Daddy all these years—and if old reality ever does pop out and say Boo we'll all get busy and pretend it never happened.

I’m sorry for making you feel bad when I should’ve done the opposite. I lost the ability to feel love when I was a boy, but you’ve slowly but surely yanked those feelings out of me. You didn’t only yank them out, you also held tight to a part of me I thought was long gone. For you, I want to go back in time and keep that part alive for the moment I met you. In the past, I thought people were destined to leave, so being attached to anyone was useless. And I thought that at some point, you would leave, too. I fought the pull to you. I fought the lure of your rose scent and your breakable softness. But I couldn’t fucking last. Not when I craved your presence the moment you were out of sight. Not when my thoughts of breaking your purity turned to a need to protect it. I told you how different my love is, how dark it can get, but I do love you, more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life. I don’t only need you; I also genuinely cannot live without you and the light you bring to my darkness. I know you deserve better, but I’m unable to let you go, so I’ll try my best to be worthy of you, Lenochka.

Critical pessimists, such as media critics Mark Crispin Miller, Noam Chomsky, and Robert McChesney, focus primarily on the obstacles to achieving a more democratic society. In the process, they often exaggerate the power of big media in order to frighten readers into taking action. I don't disagree with their concern about media concentration, but the way they frame the debate is self-defeating insofar as it disempowers consumers even as it seeks to mobilize them. Far too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation, "propaganda machines" and "weapons of mass deception". Again and again, this version of the media reform movement has ignored the complexity of the public's relationship to popular culture and sided with those opposed to a more diverse and participatory culture. The politics of critical utopianism is founded on a notion of empowerment; the politics of critical pessimism on a politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are doing with media, and the other on what media is doing to us. As with previous revolutions, the media reform movement is gaining momentum at a time when people are starting to feel more empowered, not when they are at their weakest.

Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing. Modern civilization does not know how to be quiet. It holds forth in an unending monologue. Postmodern society rejects the past and looks at the present as a cheap consumer object; it pictures the future in terms of an almost obsessive progress. Its dream, which has become a sad reality, will have been to lock silence away in a damp, dark dungeon. Thus there is a dictatorship of speech, a dictatorship of verbal emphasis. In this theater of shadows, nothing is left but a purulent wound of mechanical words, without perspective, without truth, and without foundation. Quite often “truth” is nothing more than the pure and misleading creation of the media, corroborated by fabricated images and testimonies. When that happens, the word of God fades away, inaccessible and inaudible. Postmodernity is an ongoing offense and aggression against the divine silence. From morning to evening, from evening to morning, silence no longer has any place at all; the noise tries to prevent God himself from speaking. In this hell of noise, man disintegrates and is lost; he is broken up into countless worries, fantasies, and fears. In order to get out of these depressing tunnels, he desperately awaits noise so that it will bring him a few consolations. Noise is a deceptive, addictive, and false tranquilizer. The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder, and kneeling before God. 75. Even in the schools, silence has disappeared. And yet how can anyone study in the midst of noise? How can you read in noise? How can you train your intellect in noise? How can you structure your thought and the contours of your interior being in noise? How can you be open to the mystery of God, to spiritual values, and to our human greatness in continual turmoil? Contemplative silence is a fragile little flame in the middle of a raging ocean. The fire of silence is weak because it is bothersome to a busy world.

Grief is like a storm. It can be calm and refreshing, a way to finally close one chapter of your life. Or it can be as unforgiving as a hurricane. It can bring our world into the abyss of darkness and turmoil. But just like with the most perilous of storms, it will soon pass. We never truly forget the helplessness and fear we felt during the eye of the storm, but we learn to move on and rebuild our lives. We never forget the loss, but the loss no longer consumes us.

why I hate Wells Fargo and Bank of America. These big banks are pieces of shit. They rip you off, charge near-extortionate fees, and use deceptive practices to beat down the average consumer. Nobody will speak up against them because everyone in the financial world wants to strike a deal with them. I have zero interest in deals with these banks. If you use them, don’t. You’re asking to be mistreated if you do. Google “Ramit best accounts” for the best checking and savings accounts and credit cards. I make no money from these recommendations. I just want you to avoid getting ripped off.

Government By The Industry, For The Industry Vice President George Bush sat in his chair across from four Monsanto executives. They had come to the White House with an unusual request. They wanted more regulation. They were venturing into a new technology, the genetic modification of food, and they were actually asking the government to oversee their emerging industry. But this was late 1986. Ronald Reagan was president and the administration was busily deregulating business. Bush needed convincing. “We bugged him for regulation,” said Leonard Guarraia, one of the executives at the meeting. “We told him that we have to be regulated.”[1] Monsanto was about to make a multibillion-dollar gamble. With this new technology, they could engineer and patent a whole new kind of food. Later, by buying up seed companies around the world, Monsanto could replace the natural seeds with their patented engineered seeds and control a hefty portion of the food supply. But there was fear among Monsanto’s ranks—fear of consumers’ and environmentalists’ reactions. Their fear was borne of experience. Years earlier, Monsanto had assured the public that their Agent Orange, the defoliant used during the Vietnam War, was safe for humans. It wasn’t. Thousands of veterans and tens of thousand of Vietnamese who suffered a wide range of maladies, including cancer, neurological disorders, and birth defects, blame Monsanto.

In A.D. 1223 an infant was born, clutching a jewel in her tiny fist. Her peasant father ran to the castle to bring back a priest, but by the time they returned to the hut, the jewel had disappeared. The priest declared that such would be the child's life: all good would slip through her fingers. The years passed, and the girl's beauty became celebrated. Knights and kings journeyed far to gaze into her eyes before leaving her on their crusades. Women and children made pilgrimages to look upon her angelic face. All who saw her felt blessed. But an ancient evil called the Atrox also saw her unearthly perfection and pursued her, offering her father great treasures if she would betroth it. The girl saw her father's poverty and agreed to the union, making only one request for herself--- that her beauty should last forever. The Atrox agreed, and she pledged her devotion for eternity. A Follower of the Atrox came to take the young woman to the underworld, but when he saw her beauty and grace, he fell desperately in love with her and she, too, with him. They tried to hide their love, but the Atrox saw through their deception. When the young woman stepped into the Cold Fire to receive immortality, instead of preserving her beauty for eternity, the flames consumed her flesh and bones, turning her into a wind spirit. The knight could not endure life without her. The force of his love drove him across the world, searching for a sorceress with the power to restore her human form. As he was crossing the sea, a storm broke out and sent his ship off course to the island of Aeaea, where Circe, an ancient enchantress, lived. Circe gave him a magic potion. With it, his beloved could possess any body she desired. Since then many young women have felt her presence and wondered afterward what made them act so wickedly, never understanding that for a brief time, the spirit of the wind had taken over their mind and soul.

FACT 4 – There is more to the creation of the Manson Family and their direction than has yet been exposed. There is more to the making of the movie Gimme Shelter than has been explained. This saga has interlocking links to all the beautiful people Robert Hall knew. The Manson Family and the Hell’s Angels were instruments to turn on enemy forces. They attacked and discredited politically active American youth who had dropped out of the establishment. The violence came down from neo-Nazis, adorned with Swastikas both in L.A. and in the Bay Area at Altamont. The blame was placed on persons not even associated with the violence. When it was all over, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the icing on this cake, famed musicians associated with a racist, neo-Nazi murder. By rearranging the facts, cutting here and there, distorting evidence, neighbors and family feared their own youth. Charles Manson made the cover of Life with those wide eyes, like Rasputin. Charles Watson didn’t make the cover. Why not? He participated in all the killings. Manson wasn’t inside the house. Manson played a guitar and made records. Watson didn’t. He was too busy taking care of matters at the lawyer’s office prior to the killings, or with officials of Young Republicans. Who were Watson’s sponsors in Texas, where he remained until his trial, separate from the Manson Family’s to psychologically distance him from the linking of Watson to the murders he actually committed. “Pigs” was scrawled in Sharon Tate’s house in blood. Was this to make blacks the suspects? Credit cards of the La Bianca family were dropped intentionally in the ghetto after the massacre. The purpose was to stir racial fears and hatred. Who wrote the article, “Did Hate Kill Tate?”—blaming Black Panthers for the murders? Lee Harvey Oswald was passed off as a Marxist. Another deception. A pair of glasses was left on the floor of Sharon Tate’s home the day of the murder. They were never identified. Who moved the bodies after the killers left, before the police arrived? The Spahn ranch wasn’t a hippie commune. It bordered the Krupp ranch, and has been incorporated into a German Bavarian beer garden. Howard Hughes knew George Spahn. He visited this ranch daily while filming The Outlaw. Howard Hughes bought the 516 acres of Krupp property in Nevada after he moved into that territory. What about Altamont? What distortions and untruths are displayed in that movie? Why did Mick Jagger insist, “the concert must go on?” There was a demand that filmmakers be allowed to catch this concert. It couldn’t have happened the same in any other state. The Hell’s Angels had a long working relationship with law enforcement, particularly in the Oakland area. They were considered heroes by the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers when they physically assaulted the dirty anti-war hippies protesting the shipment of arms to Vietnam. The laboratory for choice LSD, the kind sent to England for the Stones, came from the Bay Area and would be consumed readily by this crowd. Attendees of the concert said there was “a compulsiveness to the event.” It had to take place. Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s lawyer, made the legal arrangements. Ruby had complained that Belli prohibited him from telling the full story of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder (another media event). There were many layers of cover-up, and many names have reappeared in subsequent scripts. Sen. Philip Hart, a member of the committee investigating illegal intelligence operations inside the US, confessed that his own children told him these things were happening. He had refused to believe them. On November 18, 1975, Sen. Hart realized matters were not only out of hand, but crimes of the past had to be exposed to prevent future outrages. How shall we ensure that it will never happen again? It will happen repeatedly unless we can bring ourselves to understand and accept that it did go on.

Blaming wild market volatility on the “animal spirits” of the herd mentality takes the focus off where it belongs: on the actions of the government. Instead of functioning as instruments of information, signaling to entrepreneurs how and when best to serve consumers, interest rates are perpetually manipulated by central bank actions to the point of meaninglessness. Artificial changes in interest rates become a deceptive feint by which entrepreneurs succumb to malinvestment, because they believe there are more resources (i.e., savings) in the system than there really are. Monetary policy insidiously plays with our time preferences and our very ability to engage in economic calculation. The greater the distortion, the greater destruction needed to correct it.

The salespeople trumpet their system’s ability to minutely model and target consumers as if they were Taliban in the crosshairs of a military drone. And yet, the same service, when it must simply detect if a user is underage, will turn out to be unable to counter the deceptions of children.

As with all cartels, it had to be created by legislation and sustained by the power of government under the deception of protecting the consumer.

The finding that rereading textbooks is often labor in vain ought to send a chill up the spines of educators and learners, because it’s the number one study strategy of most people—including more than 80 percent of college students in some surveys—and is central in what we tell ourselves to do during the hours we dedicate to learning. Rereading has three strikes against it. It is time consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery of the content.

That Orwell should uphold a Marxist view of religion appears to have struck his earliest Russian admirers as his most dangerous flaw, a fatal streak of naiveté. And that was, in part at least, because atheism and Bolshevism were so closely linked in their imaginations..... Moses did not make it to Russia until more honest admirers picked up on the deception during glasnost. Such was the all-consuming logic of the Cold War. Orwell was to be sainted as an anti-communist, but western propagandists superstitiously erased his atheism in order to wield him against the godless utopia. The Bolsheviks, they seem to have reasoned, had launched their struggle on the spiritual battlefield, and it was there that the West had to finish it.

self-deception that contributes to ethical fading is when we remove ourselves from the chain of causation or, as the CEO of Mylan did, blame “the system” for our own transgressions. Sometimes we can take ourselves so far out of the chain of causation that we actually lay all the responsibility for how our products affect a consumer on the consumer.

I was a sad fucking kid and I’m grateful my son’s fate isn’t the same.

Power is endlessly seductive and deceptive in its own way. It is a labyrinth—your mind becomes consumed with solving its infinite problems, and you soon realize how pleasantly lost you have become. In other words, it becomes most amusing by taking it seriously.

Statement on Generative AI Just like Artificial Intelligence as a whole, on the matter of Generative AI, the world is divided into two camps - one side is the ardent advocate, the other is the outspoken opposition. As for me, I am neither. I don't have a problem with AI generated content, I have a problem when it's rooted in fraud and deception. In fact, AI generated content could open up new horizons of human creativity - but only if practiced with conscience. For example, we could set up a whole new genre of AI generated material in every field of human endeavor. We could have AI generated movies, alongside human movies - we could have AI generated music, alongside human music - we could have AI generated poetry and literature, alongside human poetry and literature - and so on. The possibilities are endless - and all above board. This way we make AI a positive part of human existence, rather than facilitating the obliteration of everything human about human life. This of course brings up a rather existential question - how do we distinguish between AI generated content and human created material? Well, you can't - any more than you can tell the photoshop alterations on billboard models or good CGI effects in sci-fi movies. Therefore, that responsibility must be carried by experts, just like medical problems are handled by healthcare practitioners. Here I have two particular expertise in mind - one precautionary, the other counteractive. Let's talk about the counteractive measure first - this duty falls upon the shoulders of journalists. Every viral content must be source-checked by responsible journalists, and declared publicly as fake, i.e. AI generated, unless recognized otherwise. Littlest of fake content can do great damage to society - therefore - journalists, stand guard! Now comes the precautionary part. Precaution against AI generated content must be borne by the makers of AI, i.e. the developers. No AI model must produce any material without some form of digital signature embedded in them, that effectively makes the distinction between AI generated content and human material mainstream. If developers fail to stand accountable out of their own free will, they must be held accountable legally. On this point, to the nations of the world I say, you can't expect backward governments like our United States to take the first step - where guns get priority over children - therefore, my brave and civilized nations of the world - you gotta set the precedent on holding tech giants accountable - without depending on morally bankrupt democratic imperialists. And remember, the idea is not to ban innovation, but to adapt it with human welfare. All said and done, the final responsibility falls upon just one person, and one person alone - the everyday ordinary consumer. Your mind has no reason to not believe the things you find on the internet, unless you make it a habit to actively question everything - or at least, not accept anything at face value. Remember this. Just because it's viral, doesn't make it true. Just because it's popular, doesn't make it right.

Far from condoning sin, his love has found a way to expose it (because he is light) and to consume it (because he is fire) without destroying the sinner, but rather saving him.”[6] This is how we know he loves us.

Je t’ai toujours traité de monstre, mais il a fallu que je t’oublie pour réaliser que tu es le monstre dont j’ai besoin.

These days, not much soothes or warms me. The cold darkness I’d been afraid would consume me when I was a child has slowly crept its way inside me as time wanes on. I’m barely able keep it out anymore. If it weren’t for the constant nearness of my brothers, it’d probably swallow me whole.

Pourquoi ne pouvais-je pas aimer quelqu’un de normal ? Oh, c’est vrai. Parce que je suis loin d’être normal moi-même.

Je ne comprenais pas mes émotions à l’époque, mais je les comprends maintenant. Je t’aime, Lia. Je t’ai toujours aimée. Pas d’un amour doux ou tendre. Il n’a rien de noble ou de délicat. Mon amour est égoïste et méchant. Mon amour me conduit à tuer des gens pour te protéger et à en faire disparaître d’autres pour te venger. Mon amour est possessif, obsessionnel et ne connaît aucune limite. Il n’en connaissait pas quand je t’ai rencontrée, et il n’en connaît certainement pas maintenant.

You think I would ever want you with another man? That’s like gutting myself with my own hands. You’re mine and I only ever want you to stay mine, not someone else’s.” “Then don’t say you’ll leave me again. You’re my last stop and I plan to stay, not move on.” “You’re my last stop, too.

And Mommy?” Jer, bless his little heart, is the first member of my fan club.

join the dress. My nipples instantly

You, too, can have your own little slice of paradise; all you have to do is destroy that paradise in the process. This kind of banal desire, and the greed that sold it, has been Florida’s true destruction. Developers pitted man versus nature, not as it had been before as a struggle for survival out in a harsh and remote wilderness, but as a struggle to uphold a false hierarchy of creation. Humans are more important than animals, they said. The soil is ours to scourge and conquer. Marketing has convinced us that trivial luxuries are more important than the natural world, as if we are not part of the natural world ourselves, as if our consumption is not a bid against our own interests, one in favor of concrete and routine against the unwieldy and awe-inspiring, monotony against biodiversity, pesticides against night music, the greed of a few against life itself on our planet. Dozens of species go extinct every day, with perhaps a million more under threat of extinction within our lifetime. Corporate greed tells us this doesn’t merit our attention. If you feel bad, cut back on your own, because it’s certainly not their fault. Such PR sleight of hand shifts the blame, feeds our guilt, inflames our anxiety, convinces us to consume more and more, until we give up caring, if we ever cared at all. Without thinking, we have become numb to the quiet collapse going on around us. Everything is connected. A species dying is a piece of our world dying. If the world dies, we die, too.

And now let me collect my strength and my thoughts and focus with everything I have on the horror of our earthly existence, on the imperfection of the world, on the myriad lives torn asunder, on the beasts that devour one another, on the snake that bites a stag as it grazes in the shade, on the wolves that slaughter sheep, on the mantises that consume their males, on the bees that die once they sting, on the mothers who labor to bring us into the world, on the blind kittens children toss into rivers, on the terror of the fish in the whale's entrails and the terror of the beaching whale, on the sadness of an elephant dying of old age, on the butterfly's fleeting joy, on the deceptive beauty of the flower, on the fleeting illusion of a lover's embrace, on the horror of spilt seed, on the impotence of the aging tiger, on the rotting of teeth in the mouth, on the myriad dead leaves lining the forest floor, on the fear of the fledgling when its mother pushes it out of the nest, on the infernal torture of the worm baking in the sun as if roasting in living fire, on the anguish of a lover's parting, on the horror known by lepers, on the hideous metamorphoses of women's breasts, on wounds, on the pain of the blind...

Power is endlessly seductive and deceptive in its own way. It is a labyrinth—your mind becomes consumed with solving its infinite problems, and you soon realize how pleasantly lost you have become.

Changing what you are consuming will affect what’s consuming you.

our freedoms, our property, and our freedom to worship; the rise of a terrifying Orwellian state. In 1900, about 85% of people were self-employed, but now, it is at about 5%. The deceptive process of consolidation, that is, larger companies taking over the market share and reducing the competition, reduces the price point for seller and consumers, even in these inflationary times. This takes us away from individual independence, eventually forcing us to rely on outside means of support to maintain a lifestyle. Although, we all continue to think we are getting a better deal at the ‘big box stores,’ we are falling into the hands of the ‘financial few,’ who have it all. This is a very dangerous path.

Those in power love it when we hold on to our fake optimism year after year, instead of revolting against these worn out celebrations. They love it when they see millions of mindless consumers storming stores to buy and consume more shiny and glittering gifts, as if they are genuine signs of loving and caring for each other. They love it when we keep quiet and do business as usual while ‘hoping for a better new year.’ So, let’s declare it loud and clear: We are not happy! Also, there is nothing new with these traditional celebrations hijacked by businessmen who have reduced them into nothing more than an excuse for consuming goods.

How can any of us even know what to believe anymore? Our culture’s full of so much phoniness and deception. Companies advertise products to make us believe that we will be more beautiful, more healthy, or live longer by consuming their products. We are seduced by lovers who feed their porn addictions when we’re asleep. We’re taught to believe that if we work hard and take risks, that we can achieve our dreams, yet youth unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades. Fairytales tell us that true love exists, but half of all marriages end in divorce.

According to Friedman, if individuals are voluntarily entering into exchanges from which both parties expect to benefit, then the market is free. This is a fairly conventional definition of a free-market economy. It hinges on the insistence that exchanges be voluntary and informed. With regard to information, an exchange cannot be free if one party has deceived another, say, by selling the other a house without divulging a severe problem with termites. Barring such deception, however, Friedman is confident that the price system in a free-market economy transmits all the information needed to make exchanges informed.

As Americans find themselves facing financial insecurity, many rely more and more on credit—and so-called “bad debt” in particular. The credit card industry has been more than happy to cooperate by providing credit to a growing group of consumers and using deceptive practices to increase their own profits. When the government began to crack down on these practices, credit all but disappeared for the financially vulnerable, leaving them with no good options.

It is impossible to be consumed by a single passion without knowing its nature, no matter what rationalizations one constructs to hide it from oneself.

America" Loans Interest rates Endless advertisements Usury and deception Countless heavy bodies filled with fear Migrant, refugee, and illegal bodies that came escaping America’s oppression in their own countries… America Depression, anxiety, and pain relief pills A political, media, and institutional matrix of power ran by one lobby… Credit cards Bankruptcy Debts Drugs The homeless Racism Weapons Strict security measures Suffocating any attempt for any meaningful change under the pretext of the homeland security… America Sanctions imposed on this country and that, Internal psychological sanctions imposed on a majority of the naïve who believe themselves to be free… America Tasteless fruit, vegetables, meats, eggs, and cheeses, injected with hormones, sprayed with pesticides and many other carcinogenic substances… America Houses that look beautiful from the outside, inhabited by people who are mostly lonely, going through psychological or nervous breakdowns, or perhaps wrestling with depression or hysteria, the luckiest of them are on daily pills to help them adapt to the psychological and spiritual death surrounding them from all sides… America Fruitless trees and scentless flowers, as if as a punishment or a curse from heaven upon those who stole the land from its native people, after erasing most of them… America Bills Sad letters in the mail, mostly from companies and advertisers wishing you a delightful day and great consumption, encouraging you to solve your problems with more consumption, and reminding you that you may die abruptly of loneliness or the toxins that you consume, and therefore, you must seriously consider purchasing your casket and the plot under which you will be buried… [Original poem published in Arabic on August 27, 2024 at ahewar.org]

One cannot underestimate the power of such a thing. It is enough to build a connection that deceptively resembles love. And who is to say it isn’t? It feels like love. It tastes like love. It consumes him like love. Perhaps these two people would not have found any reason to be with each other in any other world. But in this one, they became each other’s only reason to live.