Creature Motivation Quotes

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

You are a confabulatory creature by nature. You are always explaining to yourself the motivations for your actions and the causes to the effects in your life, and you make them up without realizing it when you don't know the answers. Over time, these explanations become your idea of who you are and your place in the world. They are your self... You are a story you tell yourself.

The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality -- the man who lives to serve others -- is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit. The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism

I thought you weren’t allowed to have a phone,” he says. “Or was that a really pathetic excuse to avoid giving me your number?” “I’m not allowed. My best friend gave it to me the other day. It can’t do anything but text.” He turns the screen around to face me. “What the hell kind of texts are these?” He turns the phone around and reads one. “Sky, you are beautiful. You are possibly the most exquisite creature in the universe and if anyone tells you otherwise, I’ll cut a bitch.” He arches an eyebrow and looks up at me, then back down to the phone. “Oh, God. They’re all like this. Please tell me you don’t text these to yourself for daily motivation.

The human creature is so astonishing, but count on it before anything else to be just that-a creature. A laughing animal, a dangerous one, a clever one, a scared one, but always acting for a reason-a motive that will move the beast towards its desires.

Still, being fragile creatures, humans always try to hide from themselves the certainty that they will die. They do not see that it is death itself that motivates them to do the best things in their lives. They are afraid to step into the dark, afraid of the unknown, and their only way of conquering that fear is to ignore the fact that their days are numbered. They do not see that with an awareness of death, they would be able to be even more daring, to go much further in their daily conquests, because then they would have nothing to lose- for death itself is inevitable.

The problem is that people have tried to look away from space and from the meaning of the moon landing. I remember seeing a picture of an astronaut standing on the moon. It was up at Yale and someone has scrawled on it, 'So what?' That is the arrogance of the kind of academic narrowness one too often sees; it is trapped in its own predictable prejudices, its own stale categories. It is the mind dulled to the poetry of existence. It's fashionable now to demand some economic payoff from space, some reward to prove it was all worthwhile. Those who say this resemble the apelike creatures in 2001. They are fighting for food among themselves, while one separates himself from them and moves to the slab, motivated by awe. That is the point they are missing. He is the one who evolves into a human being; he is the one who understands the future.

Everything that motivates living creatures is based on some weakness or flaw. Hunger motivates animals. Lust motivates animals. Fear and pain motivate animals. A God would have none of those impulses. Humans are driven by all of our animal passions plus loftier-sounding things like self-actualization and creativity and freedom and love

The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It’s the tender understanding that we’re living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there’s quite a bit of wonder in that.

The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let's call it a---a germ. And let's say conditions prove right for that germ to develop---to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy and malice and frustration...

The personal, as every one’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.   QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learnt by Now Volume II

Yes!" He says. "Fear is an excellent motivator. I find that it really brings out the true ingenuity of a creature.

These letters and words, when placed in the right order, would conjure all manner of exotic beasts and people from the shadows, would reveal the motives and minds of insects and of cats. They were spells, spelled with words to make worlds, waiting for me, in the pages of books.

Leave mystery in your life. Give them a little and keep them wondering. If you reveal everything about yourself, people will lose interest. For as humans, we are curious creatures. We are more interested in the things lurking in the shadows than the things that are brought into the light.

The creatures reproduce by flaking. The young, when shed by a parent, are indistinguishable from dandruff. There is only one sex. Every creature simply sheds flakes of his own kind, and his own kind is like everybody else's kind. There is no childhood as such. Flakes begin flaking three Earthling hours after they themselves have been shed. They do not reach maturity, then deteriorate and die. They reach maturity and stay in full bloom, so to speak, for as long as Mercury cares to sing. There is no way in which one creature can harm another, and no motive for one’s harming another. Hunger, envy, ambition, fear, indignation, religion, and sexual lust are irrelevant and unknown. The creatures only have one sense: touch. They have weak powers of telepathy. The messages they are capable of transmitting and receiving are almost as monotonous as the song of Mercury. They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first. The first is, "Here I am, here I am, here I am." The second is, "So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.

They were waiting for me in the books and in stories, after all, hiding inside the twenty six characters and a handful of punctuation marks. These letters and words, when placed in the right order, would conjure all manner of exotic beasts and people from the shadows, would reveal the motives and minds of insects and of cats. They were spells, spelled with words to make worlds, waiting for me, in the pages of books.

Never give your soul to a creature, because it belongs to God alone; see in all creatures a motive for rejoicing, in homage to the Creator; never seek yourself in another, but discover yourself in yourself

Motivation 1.0 presumed that humans were biological creatures, struggling to obtain our basic needs for food, security and sex. Motivation 2.0 presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishments. That worked fine for routine tasks but incompatible with how we organize what we do, how we think about what we do, and how we do what we do. We need an upgrade. Motivation 3.0, the upgrade we now need, presumes that humans also have a drive to learn, to create, and to better the world.

What do Halloween creatures eat? Hot spider soup with pumpkin meat and toasted, no-salt, bat-wing chips, served best with Transylvania dips. A thistle-horehound salad mix has added crunch from sun-dried ticks. The plat du jour is hairy beast fried crisp in grimy goblin grease. Now, don’t forget dessert so sweet; try puss-cream pie or candied feet!

If eggs can grow into great creatures, you can too.

Though reason must guide us in laying down standards and laws regarding animals, and in examining the arguments of those who reject such standards, it is usually best in any moral inquiry to start with the original motivation, which in the case of animals we may without embarrassment call love. Human beings love animals as only the higher love the lower, the knowing love the innocent, and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us even when we ignore it, and those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity.

history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature. —Pope Benedict XVI, address at the opening of the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, October 6, 2008

Best of all, of course, religion solves the problem of death, which no living individuals can solve, no matter how they would support us. Religion, then, gives the possibility of heroic victory in freedom and solves the problem of human dignity at it highest level. The two ontological motives of the human condition are both met: the need to surrender oneself in full to the the rest of nature, to become a part of it by laying down one's whole existence to some higher meaning; and the need to expand oneself as an individual heroic personality. Finally, religion alone gives hope, because it holds open the dimension of the unknown and the unknowable, the fantastic mystery of creation that the human mind cannot even begin to approach, the possibility of a multidimensionality of spheres of existence, of heavens and possible embodiments that make a mockery of earthly logic-and in doing so, it relieves the absurdity of earthly life, all the impossible limitations and frustrations of living matter. In religious terms, to "see God" is to die, because the creature is too small and finite to be able to bear the higher meanings of creation. Religion takes one's very creatureliness, one's insignificance, and makes it a condition of hope. Full transcendence of the human condition means limitless possibility unimaginable to us.

certain we are that it is justified. When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

I don’t think of you as a typical beauty. I never once did. To me your hair mimics asphalt more than the lustrous feathers of ravens. Comparing your eyes to heavenly lights seems a stretch when they are the common color of dirt. I can’t imagine you as a tall, pole-slender image; your God-given shape is right bulky. But I never cared about such pointless things anyway. What good have trivial attributes ever done the world? When I look at you, I see you—or in other words, all of you that really matters. I see a kind heart and compassionate arms. I see a patient, gentle spirit abounding with love towards all of God’s creatures. I see the perfect blend of humility and strength of character. I see a wise intellect as well as an endearing sense of humor. I see all the qualities that make you the person I love, regardless of the bodily package you’re bound in. So forgive me if I don’t think you’re beautiful, because I find you to be far superior to that worthless and pointless nonsense the world calls beauty.

The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.

Someday we will realize that man is not controlled by laws, but byb passions. it is the strongest of passions that led to mankind's finest artistic creations. Men who aren't motivated by strong passions are nothing more than mediocre creatures. Great passions yield great men. If there is no passions, there is decrepitude and stupidity. - Marquis De Sade

We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

The creature may not haste above the maker; neither may the world hold them at once that shall be created therein.

No living creature can foretell the future.

We often are creatures of momentum.

Never give up the freeness of your soul. Live your duty to mankind, nurture creatures of this world as a true mother of the earth, but never shut your imagination off from those desires that distinguish you from the ordinary. Never allow yourself to be sapped of that extraordinary energy that is the necessary ingredient for creating something new and progressive.

if you really want to know spirituality, don’t look for anything. People think spirituality is about looking for God or truth or the ultimate. The problem is you have already defined what you are looking for. It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.

Some of the most memorable, and least regrettable, nights of my own youth were spent in coon hunting with farmers. There is no denying that these activities contributed to the economy of farm households, but a further fact is that they were pleasures; they were wilderness pleasures, not greatly different from the pleasures pursued by conservationists and wilderness lovers. As I was always aware, my friends the coon hunters were not motivated just by the wish to tree coons and listen to hounds and listen to each other, all of which were sufficiently attractive; they were coon hunters also because they wanted to be afoot in the woods at night. Most of the farmers I have known, and certainly the most interesting ones, have had the capacity to ramble about outdoors for the mere happiness of it, alert to the doings of the creatures, amused by the sight of a fox catching grasshoppers, or by the puzzle of wild tracks in the snow.

I believe you have a calling. I believe you are important as a creature of God. I believe we are all called and this is your life! I believe you deserve to live your life in a successful way.

The prime motive of science is not to control the Universe but to appreciate it more fully. It is a huge privilege to live on Earth and to share it with so many goodly and fantastic creatures.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

The darkness of the room is pulsing with gunfire, and by our standards we are grossly outnumbered - there are only three of us to every one of them - but something is tipping things in our favor. Our manic speed is uncharacteristic of the Dead, and our prey are not prepared for it. Is this all coming from me? Creatures without desire usually don't move quickly, but they're following my lead, and I am an angry whirlwind.

He turns the screen around to face me. “What the hell kind of texts are these?” He turns the phone around and reads one. “Sky, you are beautiful. You are possibly the most exquisite creature in the universe and if anyone tells you otherwise, I’ll cut a bitch.” He arches an eyebrow and looks up at me, then back down to the phone. “Oh, God. They’re all like this. Please tell me you don’t text these to yourself for daily motivation.

As thou hast said unto thy servant, that thou, which gives life to all, hast given life at once to the creature that thou hast created, and the creature bare it: even so it might now also bear them that now be present at once.

. . . Neither ecological nor social engineering will lead us to a conflict-free, simple path . . . Utilitarians and others who simply advise us to be happy are unhelpful, because we almost always have to make a choice either between different kinds of happiness--different things to be happy _about_--or between these and other things we want, which nothing to do with happiness. . . . Do we find ourselves a species naturally free from conflict? We do not. There has not, apparently, been in our evolution a kind of rationalization which might seem a possible solution to problems of conflict--namely, a takeover by some major motive, such as the desire for future pleasure, which would automatically rule out all competing desires. Instead, what has developed is our intelligence. And this in some ways makes matters worse, since it shows us many desirable things that we would not otherwise have thought of, as well as the quite sufficient number we knew about for a start. In compensation, however, it does help us to arbitrate. Rules and principles, standards and ideals emerge as part of a priority system by which we guide ourselves through the jungle. They never make the job easy--desires that we put low on our priority system do not merely vanish--but they make it possible. And it is in working out these concepts more fully, in trying to extend their usefulness, that moral philosophy begins. Were there no conflict, it [moral philosophy] could never have arisen. The motivation of living creatures does got boil down to any single basic force, not even an 'instinct of self-preservation.' It is a complex pattern of separate elements, balanced roughly in the constitution of the species, but always liable to need adjusting. Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means to survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. . . An obsessive creature dominated constantly by one kind of motive, would not survive. All moral doctrine, all practical suggestions about how we ought to live, depend on some belief about what human nature is like. The traditional business of moral philosophy is attempting to understand, clarify, relate, and harmonize so far as possible the claims arising from different sides of our nature. . . . One motive does not necessarily replace another smoothly and unremarked. There is _ambivalence_, conflict behavior.

Humans are purpose-driven creatures. We want to believe there are reasons behind everything we do. Before leaders can inspire action, they have to get emotional buy-in. When we explain the motivations behind a goal, it allows listeners to feel partial ownership of that goal.

We start off in childhood believing parents might have access to a superior kind of knowledge and experience. They look, for a while, astonishingly competent. Our exaggerated esteem is touching, but also intensely problematic, for it sets them up as the ultimate objects of blame when we gradually discover that they are flawed, sometimes unkind, in areas ignorant and utterly unable to save us from certain troubles. It can take a while, until the fourth decade or the final hospital scenes, for a more forgiving stance to emerge. Their new condition, frail and frightened, reveals in a compellingly physical way something which has always been true psychologically: that they are uncertain vulnerable creatures motivated more by anxiety, fear, a clumsy love and unconscious compulsions than by godlike wisdom and moral clarity -- and cannot, therefore, forever be held responsible for either their own shortcomings or our many disappointments.

As in my political works my motive and object have been to give man an elevated sense of his own character, and free him from the slavish and superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hereditary government, so in my publications on religious subjects my endeavors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures, and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation in his creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to bethe word of God.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; in its precepts 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt'. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures [...]. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience;

As in my political works my motive and object have been to give man an elevated sense of his own character, and free him from the slavish and superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hereditary government, so in my publications on religious subjects my endeavors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures, and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation in his creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to bethe word of God. Introductory

The survival instinct, however, is self-conscious in human beings; and when it consciously motivates our behavior, it defines us as radically self-centered creatures. Our self-centered drive to survive is a universal reality rooted in our biology. It was this aspect of our humanity that led our ancient religious mythmakers to try to describe its origins. “Original sin” was their answer to the question of the source of our universal human self-centeredness. No one understood that survival was an involuntary biological drive in life. Instead it was understood as the result of sinfulness and of disobedience. Atonement theology was born as a way to address this universal flaw in our understanding of human life.

And yet, as we’ve seen throughout the book, beliefs aren’t always in the driver’s seat. Instead, they’re often better modeled as symptoms of the underlying incentives, which are frequently social rather than psychological. This is the religious elephant in the brain: We don’t worship simply because we believe. Instead, we worship (and believe) because it helps us as social creatures.

Here’s a good reason to never think of yourself as a VICTIM: the origin of the word comes from living creatures sacrificed to supernatural powers. So don’t you let anyone pin you down on an altar and take the life from you. You might have been hurt, abused, wounded, and used, but you are not theirs. You are your own. The meaning of OWN means to make one’s own…so there you go. You decide. They don’t.

Biology teaches us that we’re competitive social animals, with all the instincts you’d expect from such creatures. And consciousness is useful—that’s why it evolved. So shouldn’t it stand to reason that we’d be hyper-conscious of our deepest biological incentives? And yet, most of the time, we seem almost willfully unaware of them. We all know they’re there. And yet they make us uncomfortable, so we mentally flinch away.

World is full of people so troubled they don’t even understand themselves. You could offer them a thousand dollars to explain their motivations, but they can’t tell you what they don’t know. And most of those miserable creatures find their way through here soon enough. So, I’m sorry, Mr. McCann. If there was a reason, it died with her. But if you ask me, it’s a question that never had an answer. Because there’s just no explanation that makes a lick of sense.

If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet in supreme Trial or Sacrifice' it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength which, if Heaven gave it may be called his own': for then, in the absence of all merely natural motives and supports he acts in that strength, and that alone, which God confers upon him through his subjected will. Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. In all other acts our will is fed through nature, that is, through created things other than the self - through the desires which our physical organism and our heredity supply to us. When we act from ourselves alone, that is, from God in ourselves - we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation: and that is why such an act undoes with 'backward mutters of deserving power' the uncreative spell which Adam laid upon his species.

self-conscious in human beings; and when it consciously motivates our behavior, it defines us as radically self-centered creatures. Our self-centered drive to survive is a universal reality rooted in our biology. It was this aspect of our humanity that led our ancient religious mythmakers to try to describe its origins. “Original sin” was their answer to the question of the source of our universal human self-centeredness. No one understood that survival was an involuntary biological drive in life.

Maybe the real issue here is that we were not created to do life by ourselves. We were not given a sentence of solitary confinement and placed in a world of isolation, but from the moment we entered this human experience, it was clear there was a world waiting to be discovered, creatures which were there for our interaction. And the spark inside us often has to be spoken to, to be touched by the soul of another. It’s as if the spark is only visible through the lens of night vision, a set of goggles which only another human being can hand to us.

Gabriel Duke. You are a complete hypocrite." "A hypocrite? Me?" "Yes, you. Mr. I-Know-a-Hidden-Tresaure-When-I-See-It. You said you know how to spot undervalued things. Undervalued people. And yet you persist in selling yourself short. If I'm the crown jewels in camouflage, you're a..." She churned the air with one hand. "... a diamond tiara." He grimaced. "Fine, you can be something manlier. A thick, knobby scepter. Will that suffice?" "I suppose it's an improvement." "For weeks, you've been insisting you haven't the slightest idea what it means to give a creature a loving home. 'I'm too ruthless, Penny. I'm only motivated by self-interest, Penny. I'm a bad, bad man, Penny.' And all this time, you've been running an orphanage? I could kick you." "I'm not running an orphanage. I give the orphanage money. That's all." "You gave them kittens." "No, you gave them kittens." "You sent them gifts at Christmas. Playthings and sweets and geese to be roasted for their dinner." "It was the only business I could attend to on Christmas, and I don't like to waste the day. All the banks and offices are closed." She skewered him with a look. "Really. You expect me to believe that?" He pushed a hand through his hair. "What is your aim with this interrogation?" "I want you to admit the truth. You are giving those children a home. A place of warmth and safety, and yes, even love. Meanwhile, you are stubbornly denying yourself all the same things." "I can't be denying myself if it's something I don't want." "Home isn't something a person wants. It's something every last one of us needs. And it's not too late for you, Gabriel." She gentled her voice. "You could have that for yourself.

As social creatures, we have a great need for belonging. The desire to foster alliances and act in a compassionate and collaborative way with other people and the world is a powerful motivator in neuroscientific terms because it activates the brain’s empathy pathways. Attachment emotions such as love and trust trigger the release of the neurochemicals oxytocin and dopamine, which contribute to feelings of bonding and pleasure as part of the brain’s reward system. Countless studies show that having a strong sense of meaning and purpose correlates with life satisfaction.4

The duties, which a man performs as a friend or parent, do not seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties, without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance: A sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to these natural ties: And the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues, which are more austere, and more founded on reflection, such as public spirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity; the moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretension to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this, a superstitious man finds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not, that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some immediate service of the supreme Being, in order to allay those terrors, with which he is haunted. And any practice, recommended to him, which either serves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations; that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of those very circumstances, which should make him absolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious, because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or consideration. And if, for its sake, he sacrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears still to rise upon him, in proportion to the zeal and devotion, which he discovers. In restoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there no god in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping; this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities. By these distinguished marks of devotion, he has now acquired the divine favor; and may expect, in recompense, protection, and safety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

Your loyalty is not to me. Well do I know it, Nora ... You alone,' he whispered, 'among every creature in my knowledge, will never let go of what is yours, no matter how it pains you. And so I know I cannot ask for your glad cooperation ... I cannot demand your submission. I can only hold you, and pray I keep you safe, and spare you, by force if need be, from the consequences of what I admire in you most.' [...] To yield to his view of her was to accept that he tried to rule her from charitable and loving impulses. But she could not grant such motives to him without also accepting his rule.

Get that pitying look off your face,' Eris snarled softly. 'I know what sort of creature my father is. I don't need your sympathy.' Cassian again studied him. 'Why did you leave Mor in the woods that day?' It was the question that would always remain. 'Was it just to impress your father?' Eris barked a laugh, harsh and empty. 'Why does it still matter to all of you so much?' 'Because she's my sister, and I love her.' 'I didn't realise Illyrians were in the habit of fucking their sisters.' Cassian growled. 'It still matters,' he ground out, 'because it doesn't add up. You know what a monster your father is and want to usurp him; you act against him in the best interests of not only the Autumn Court but also all of the faerie lands; you risk your life to ally with us... and yet you left her in the woods. Is it guilt that motivates all of this? Because you left her to suffer and die?' Golden flame simmered in Eris's gaze. 'I didn't realise I'd be facing another interrogation so soon.' 'Give me a damn answer.' Eris crossed his arms, then winced. As if whatever injuries lay beneath his immaculate clothes ached. 'You're not the person I want to explain myself to.' 'I doubt Mor will want to listen.

Perhaps if more people were aware of the First Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they’d be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they are part of. If we knew how many species we’ve already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive. This is especially relevant to the large animals of the oceans. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, the large sea animals suffered relatively little from the Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions. But many of them are on the brink of extinction now as a result of industrial pollution and human overuse of oceanic resources. If things continue at the present pace, it is likely that whales, sharks, tuna and dolphins will follow the diprotodons, ground sloths and mammoths to oblivion. Among all the world’s large creatures, the only survivors of the human flood will be humans themselves, and the farmyard animals that serve as galley slaves in Noah’s Ark.

This makes us, however unintuitively, the most powerful people that have ever lived…Nothing has threatened our ecologies more than the extraction and burning of fossil fuels and the affluent consumer culture…But we have also been granted an astonishingly beautiful gift that has never before been given to humans: the chance to shepherd human and animal life into the coming centuries and millennia, when we know that much of it would otherwise disappear. That’s a power that should make us very humble and a privilege that can motivate us profoundly. In a way, our darkness- the knowledge that without our great effort, many or most of Earth’s creatures will vanish- is what reveals the light within, the seed of life and possibility that we share with all of Earth’s life, the one that we can carry forward. For better and for worse, we are the ones at the intersection of knowledge and agency. LOVING A VANISHING WORLD by Emily N. Johnston

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.

But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many other umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can’t even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just “there,” limbs to be; used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man’s body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man’s very insides—his self—are foreign to him. He doesn’t know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, “It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods.

Why is it,” he asked instead, “that if I kept livestock in my home, people would say I was ignorant or daft, but if a pig wanders freely in the mansion of an earl, it’s called eccentric?” “There are three things that everyone expects of an aristocrat,” the valet replied, tugging firmly at the pig’s collar. “A country house, and a weak chin, and eccentricity.” He pushed and pulled at the pig with increasing determination, but the creature only sat more heavily. “I vow,” the valet wheezed, budging him only an inch at a time, “I’ll have you turned into sausage and collops by tomorrow’s breakfast!” Ignoring the determined valet, the pig stared up at Rhys with patient, hopeful eyes. “Quincy,” Rhys said, “look sharp.” He picked up a bread roll from his plate and tossed it casually in the air. The valet caught it deftly in a white-gloved hand. “Thank you, sir.” As he walked to the door with the bread in hand, the pig trotted after him. Rhys watched with a faint smile. “Desire,” he said, “is always better motivation than fear. Remember that, Quincy.

​If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence,—rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of Nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.

But nature has protected the lower animal by endowing them with instincts. An instinct is a programmed perception that calls into play a programmed reaction. It is very simple. Animals are not moved by what they cannot react to. They live in a tiny world, a sliver of reality, one neuro-chemical program that keeps them walking behind their nose and shuts out everything else. But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can't even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just "there," limbs to be used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man's body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man's very insides-his self-are foreign to him. He doesn't know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, "It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods." There it is again: gods with anuses.

But there is one privilege the Gy-ei carefully retain, and the desire for which perhaps forms the secret motive of most lady asserters of woman rights above ground. They claim the privilege, here usurped by men, of proclaiming their love and urging their suit; in other words, of being the wooing party rather than the wooed. Such a phenomenon as an old maid does not exist among the Gy-ei. Indeed it is very seldom that a Gy does not secure any An upon whom she sets her heart, if his affections be not strongly engaged elsewhere. However coy, reluctant, and prudish, the male she courts may prove at first, yet her perseverance, her ardour, her persuasive powers, her command over the mystic agencies of vril, are pretty sure to run down his neck into what we call “the fatal noose.” Their argument for the reversal of that relationship of the sexes which the blind tyranny of man has established on the surface of the earth, appears cogent, and is advanced with a frankness which might well be commended to impartial consideration. They say, that of the two the female is by nature of a more loving disposition than the male—that love occupies a larger space in her thoughts, and is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore she ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a shy and dubitant creature—that he has often a selfish predilection for the single state—that he often pretends to misunderstand tender glances and delicate hints—that, in short, he must be resolutely pursued and captured.

The First Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the foragers, was followed by the Second Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the farmers, and gives us an important perspective on the Third Wave Extinction, which industrial activity is causing today. Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology. Perhaps if more people were aware of the First Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they’d be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they are part of. If we knew how many species we’ve already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive. This is especially relevant to the large animals of the oceans. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, the large sea animals suffered relatively little from the Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions. But many of them are on the brink of extinction now as a result of industrial pollution and human overuse of oceanic resources. If things continue at the present pace, it is likely that whales, sharks, tuna and dolphins will follow the diprotodons, ground sloths and mammoths to oblivion. Among all the world’s large creatures, the only survivors of the human flood will be humans themselves, and the farmyard animals that serve as galley slaves in Noah’s Ark.

Some people put years into their heroic accomplishments; assassins do not. While stalking Richard Nixon, Bremer wrote, “I’m as important as the start of WWI. I just need the little opening, and a second of time.” Such narcissism is a central feature of every assassin, and like many of their characteristics, it is in us all to some degree. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book Denial of Death, Ernest Becker observes that narcissism is universal. Becker says every child’s “whole organism shouts the claim of his natural narcissism. It is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration, it expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation.” Becker says we all look for heroics in our lives, adding that in some people “it is a screaming for glory as uncritical and reflexive as the howling of a dog.” But the howls for glory of assassins had been unanswered in their mundane pre-attack lives. The assassin might be weird or unusual, but we cannot say we don’t understand his motives, his goal. He wants what Americans want: recognition, and he wants what all people want: significance. People who don’t get that feeling in childhood seek ways to get it in adulthood. It is as if they have been malnourished for a lifetime and seek to fix it with one huge meal. The same search for significance is part of the motivation for the young gang member who kills, because violence is the fastest way to get identity. Murderer Jack Henry Abbott describes the “involuntary pride and exhilaration all convicts feel when they are chained up hand and foot like dangerous animals. The world has focused on us for a moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world.

Some people put years into their heroic accomplishments; assassins do not. While stalking Richard Nixon, Bremer wrote, “I’m as important as the start of WWI. I just need the little opening, and a second of time.” Such narcissism is a central feature of every assassin, and like many of their characteristics, it is in us all to some degree. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book Denial of Death, Ernest Becker observes that narcissism is universal. Becker says every child’s “whole organism shouts the claim of his natural narcissism. It is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration, it expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation.” Becker says we all look for heroics in our lives, adding that in some people “it is a screaming for glory as uncritical and reflexive as the howling of a dog.” But the howls for glory of assassins had been unanswered in their mundane pre-attack lives. The assassin might be weird or unusual, but we cannot say we don’t understand his motives, his goal. He wants what Americans want: recognition, and he wants what all people want: significance. People who don’t get that feeling in childhood seek ways to get it in adulthood. It is as if they have been malnourished for a lifetime and seek to fix it with one huge meal. The same search for significance is part of the motivation for the young gang member who kills, because violence is the fastest way to get identity. Murderer Jack Henry Abbott describes the “involuntary pride and exhilaration all convicts feel when they are chained up hand and foot like dangerous animals. The world has focused on us for a moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world.” Ernest Becker writes, “The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to society.

For the disciplined man, as for the true believer, no detail is unimportant, but not so much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power that wishes to seize it. Characteristic is the great hymn to the 'little things' and to their eternal importance, sung by Jean Baptiste de La Salle, in his "Traité sur les obligations des freres des Ecoles chretienne" (Treaty on the obligations of the Brothers of the Christian Schools). The mystique of the everyday is joined here with the discipline of the minute. 'How dangerous it is to neglect little things. It is a very consoling reflection for a soul like mine, little disposed to great actions, to think that fidelity to little things may, by an imperceptible progress, raise us to the most eminent sanctity: because little things lead to greater . . . Little things; it will be said, alas, my God, what can we do that is great for you, weak and mortal creatures that we are. Little things; if great things presented themselves would we perform them! Would we not think them beyond our strength! Little things; and if God accepts them and wishes to receive them as great things! Little things; has one ever felt this? Does one judge according to experience? Little things; one is certainly guilty, therefore, of seeing them as such, one refuses them! Little things; yet it is they that in the end have made great saints! Yes, little things; but great motives, great feelings, great fervour, great ardour, and consequently great merits, great treasures, great rewards! (La Salle). The meticulousness of the regulations, the fussiness of the inspections, the supervision of the smallest fragment of life and of the body - will soon provide, in the context of the school, the barracks, the hospital or the workshop, a laicized content, an economic or technical rationality for this mystical calculus of the infinitesimal and the infinite.

men having power too often misapplied it; that though we made slaves of the negroes, and the Turks made slaves of the Christians, I believed that liberty was the natural right of all men equally. This he did not deny, but said the lives of the negroes were so wretched in their own country that many of them lived better here than there. I replied, "There is great odds in regard to us on what principle we act"; and so the conversation on that subject ended. I may here add that another person, some time afterwards, mentioned the wretchedness of the negroes, occasioned by their intestine wars, as an argument in favor of our fetching them away for slaves. To which I replied, if compassion for the Africans, on account of their domestic troubles, was the real motive of our purchasing them, that spirit of tenderness being attended to, would incite us to use them kindly that, as strangers brought out of affliction, their lives might be happy among us. And as they are human creatures, whose souls are as precious as ours, and who may receive the same help and comfort from the Holy Scriptures as we do, we could not omit suitable endeavors to instruct them therein; but that while we manifest by our conduct that our views in purchasing them are to advance ourselves, and while our buying captives taken in war animates those parties to push on the war, and increase desolation amongst them, to say they live unhappily in Africa is far from being an argument in our favor. I further said, the present circumstances of these provinces to me appear difficult; the slaves look like a burdensome stone to such as burden themselves with them; and that if the white people retain a resolution to prefer their outward prospects of gain to all other considerations, and do not act conscientiously toward them as fellow-creatures, I believe that burden will grow heavier and heavier, until times change in a way disagreeable to us. The person appeared very serious, and owned that in considering their condition and the manner of their treatment in these provinces he had sometimes thought it might be just in the Almighty so to order it.

I glanced across the room at Thaddeus seated at a long table within a group of shop keepers, and I contemplated him strongly. My heart leaped in my chest at the mere sight of him. I felt myself overcome. The acts of kindness and sweet attention and gratifying moments of passion afforded me by this man since the day of our marriage were purely pleasing. To be loved was a desirous affair! It was the aim of every beating heart! I nearly cast aside my concerns and allowed myself to be consumed by these agreeable sentiments except for one thing: I could not forget how stripped of power and dignity I had felt that very morning. Thaddeus had essentially commanded me to sit and stay like a dog. And I had heeded my master without so much as a growl! This was not me. No one stayed me. I watched those at the table grow more intensely involved in the details of a trade agreement I cared nothing about. Such business bartering was always selfishly motivated. When it appeared that my husband’s attention was engrossed on a point of aggressive negotiation, I excused myself from the weaving party and slipped out the back door. I turned down the alleyway and hurried to a crumbling chimney flue that was easy enough to climb. Almost immediately, a fit of anxiety gripped at my chest, and I felt as if a war was being waged in my gut—a battle between my desire to protect what harmony existed in my marriage and the selfish want to reclaim an ounce of the independence I had lost. This painful struggle nearly persuaded me to reconsider my childish act of defiance. Why was I stupidly jeopardizing my marriage? For what purpose? To stand upon a rooftop in sheer rebellion? Was I really that needy? That proud? I could hear my husband’s command echoing in my mind—no kind persuasion, but a strict order to keep my feet on the ground. I understood his cautious reasoning, and I didn’t doubt he was acting out of concern for my safety, but I was not some fragile, incapable, defenseless creature in need of a controlling overseer. What irked me most was how my natural defenses had failed me. And the only way I could see to restore my confidence was to prove I had not lost the courage and ability to make my own choices and carry them out. Perhaps this act of defiance was childish, but it was remedial as well.

Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (520) Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, (530) That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, (540) And can say nothing; no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, As deep as to the lungs? who does me this? Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall (550) To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, (560) A scullion! Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; (570) I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

That the life of Man is but a dream has been sensed by many a one, and I too am never free of the feeling. When I consider the restrictions that are placed on the active, inquiring energies of Man; when I see that all our efforts have no other result than to satisfy needs which in turn serve no purpose but to prolong our wretched existence, and then see that all our reassurance concerning the particular questions we probe is no more than dreamy resignation, since all we are doing is to paint our prison walls with colourful figures and bright views – all of this, Wilhelm, leaves me silent. I withdraw into myself, and discover a world, albeit a notional world of dark desire rather than one of actuality and vital strength. And everything swims before my senses, and I go my way in the world wearing the smile of the dreamer. All our learned teachers and educators are agreed that children do not know why they want what they want; but no one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. And yet it seems palpably clear to me. I gladly confess, since I know the reply you would want to make, that they are the happiest who, like children, live for the present moment, drag their dolls around and dress and undress them, and watchfully steal by the drawer where Mama has locked away the cake, and, when at last they get their hands on what they want, devour it with their cheeks crammed full and cry, ‘More!’ – They are happy creatures. And those others, who give pompous titles to their beggarly pursuits and even to their passions, and chalk them up as vast enterprises for the good and well-being of mankind, they too are happy. – It is all very well for those who can be like that! But he who humbly perceives where it is all leading, who sees how prettily the happy man makes an Eden of his garden, and how even the unhappy man goes willingly on his weary way, panting beneath his burden, and that all are equally interested in seeing the light of the sun for one minute more – he indeed will be silent, and will create a world from within for himself, and be happy because he is a man. And then, confined as he may be, he none the less still preserves in his heart the sweet sensation of freedom, and the knowledge he can quit this prison whenever he wishes.

But people do not exist as individual units separate from human relationships and groups. A great deal of the cost of committing suicide faced by a person wanting to die is social and empathetic: it is resonant in the loneliness and grief that his death will cause, or at least hasten, among parents, children, siblings, a spouse, or friends. As social creatures, we begin forming bonds at least as soon as we are born; these bonds, while often no more voluntarily chosen than our own births, are powerful motivations. Those with whom we have formed social bonds rely on us, imposing a significant cost on suicide even for a miserable person who genuinely wishes to die.

Humans are incredibly malleable creatures, and we reserve the right to seek out growth for the entirety of our lives.

We start off in childhood believing parents might have access to a superior kind of knowledge and experience. They look, for a while, astonishingly competent. Our exaggerated esteem is touching but also intensely problematic, for it sets them up as the ultimate objects of blame when we gradually discover that they are flawed, sometimes unkind, in areas ignorant and utterly unable to save us from certain troubles. It can take a while, until the fourth decade or the final hospital scenes, for a more forgiving stance to emerge. Their new condition, frail and frightened, reveals in a compellingly physical way something which has always been true psychologically: that they are uncertain vulnerable creatures motivated more by anxiety, fear, a clumsy love, and unconscious compulsions than by godlike wisdom and moral clarity—and cannot, therefore, forever be held responsible for either their own shortcomings or our many disappointments.

Like a mother weaning a child, God dries up the feeling of satisfaction and takes away the pleasure in the things of God as well as in things of earth. We become wearied of both God and creature and are left with the painful feeling that we are not serving God or our neighbor properly. We no longer feel the enjoyment, good feelings, and security we used to feel. John says that if we endure and persevere in prayer to God and service to others despite the absence of all satisfaction, then we will begin to act with a new motivation - Christ's. The connection between satisfaction and our motivation to act will have been severed. We will then act and choose not because of the pleasure we bring ourselves but because of something higher, namely, a desire to be of help to everything and everybody in their struggle towards consummation and union in love, beauty, truth, and goodness.

is also a book about animals as animals. Some scientists study the senses of other animals to better understand ourselves, using exceptional creatures like electric fish, bats, and owls as “model organisms” for exploring how our own sensory systems work. Others reverse-engineer animal senses to create new technologies: Lobster eyes have inspired space telescopes, the ears of a parasitic fly have influenced hearing aids, and military sonar has been honed by work on dolphin sonar. These are both reasonable motivations. I’m not interested in either. Animals are not just stand-ins for humans or fodder for brainstorming sessions. They have worth in themselves. We’ll explore their senses to better understand their lives. “They move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” wrote the American naturalist Henry Beston. “They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Once we’ve “othered” someone, we may unconsciously define them as inhuman, inferior, even abhorrent. Why, the very existence of such anomalous creatures is a threat to our way of being! When we band together with our in-groups to complain about the “others,” our adrenaline and other “fight” hormones spike, giving us an intoxicating, artificial sense of purpose and belonging. The more violently we speak and act, the more righteous we feel. Again, this is different from the anger we feel when we experience injustice or oppression. Healthy anger motivates discernment. It focuses on specific problems. It works toward changing conditions, and when those conditions change, it subsides. Righteous error attacks for vague, ill-defined, or contradictory reasons, and doesn’t change with circumstances. It passes judgment, often without evidence. Healthy anger makes judgments, discerning what is fair and what isn’t. Here’s a chart to help you tell them apart.

Once we’ve “othered” someone, we may unconsciously define them as inhuman, inferior, even abhorrent. Why, the very existence of such anomalous creatures is a threat to our way of being! When we band together with our in-groups to complain about the “others,” our adrenaline and other “fight” hormones spike, giving us an intoxicating, artificial sense of purpose and belonging. The more violently we speak and act, the more righteous we feel. Again, this is different from the anger we feel when we experience injustice or oppression. Healthy anger motivates discernment. It focuses on specific problems. It works toward changing conditions, and when those conditions change, it subsides. Righteous error attacks for vague, ill-defined, or contradictory reasons, and doesn’t change with circumstances. It passes judgment, often without evidence. Healthy anger makes judgments, discerning what is fair and what isn’t.

We are innately biased against outsiders. This bias is seized upon and manipulated by indoctrination and propaganda to motivate men and women to slaughter one another. This is done by inducing men to regard their enemies as subhuman creatures, which overrides their natural, biological inhibitions against killing. So dehumanization has the specific function of unleashing aggression in war. This is a cultural process, not a biological one, but it has to ride piggyback on biological adaptations in order to be effective.

You must raise up your original motivation and aspiration, plant yourself with fearlessness in the unity of mind and body, and cut through obstructions using your koan, using the breath counting, using whatever your method is. In this training, you may have confidence that all the awakened beings of the ten directions support you; all the myriad things—the earth with its trees, mountains, and rivers, all creatures and people, the sky, sun, and moon and extending to the most distant galaxy—all of these ceaselessly proclaim the Buddhist teaching.

Why are the central nervous systems of mammals so much alike, and wouldn't it stand to reason that they serve precisely the same evolutionary purpose, motivating each creature to flee bodily harm and thereby perpetuate the species? If the purpose of pain is the same for us as for other animals, if the internal mechanisms of pain are the same, if the outward expressions of pain are the same, and if the medical treatments for pain are the same, why wouldn't the physical experience of pain be the same - and for that matter, the psychological experience of it as well?

With true American tenacity, she refused to be deterred by his rudeness. I'm so intrigued because I don't understand a word. Alarming. A man immune to female charm was a dangerous creature when charm was one's chief line of defense. People are chiefly motivated by convenience, vanity or greed. Any product serving those will be a commercial success. Capitalism worships only itself. Bewildering, how one could lie entwined, skin to skin, breathing each other's breaths, only to become strangers again.

Hello everyone (Fools & Wise Ones)! Welcome to New Month, April! A month known for sunshine, spring vibes & it’s fool’s day. Honestly speaking, it is human nature to think wisely & act foolishly. Isn’t that the truth? We spend hours contemplating the best course of action, only to be tripped up by emotions, impulses or that one extra Gulab Jamun or laddu staring us from our dining table. Sweetheart, Isn’t that just delightful? Here’s to thinking big, acting…well, sometimes a little less big & learning to laugh along the way. Remember, even the wisest person trips on their shoelaces occasionally. But hold on, dear, before you align yourself to a life of perpetual folly, here’s the good news: The fact that we CAN think wisely means we CAN act wisely. I wish & hope that from today itself you will begin to catch yourself in the act of thinking foolishly (every time)… Darling listen – we’ll still have our April Fools’ Day moments (because, let’s face it, sometimes life is the biggest prankster of all). But by acknowledging this human tendency & taking steps to bridge the wisdom-action gap, we can turn this month & every month, into a celebration of our ability to be not just thoughtful creatures, but thoughtful doers. May this month be everything you hope for & more! Happy New Month! Blessings!

There are four personality profiles of gamers, according to Bartle. One: Achievers. Their motivation is accumulating points in games and reaching preset goals. Two: Explorers. They want to spend time prowling through the unknown and discovering places and people and creatures that haven't been seen before. Three: Socializers. They build networks and create communities. Four: Killers. They come to games to complete, to win. That's the sole purpose of gaming to them. Winning.

The longer I work with Brag, the less I see him the way I used to see a dog. He doesn’t feel like a dog at all, more like some creature that possesses entirely unique behaviors and motivations; a werewolf. I suppose. I trust him, some of the time. When I release him to do his job and I’ve done my job to try to limit the possible outcomes (biting another police officer, biting an innocent civilian, biting anyone he’s not supposed to bite, whether they are innocent or not). I’m confident he won’t fail.

You are sculpting yourself. Of course it's painful. Carving every detail you want in your life into the tender fabrics of your own existence. Your body, your mind, your business, your home. Is it not beautiful? How there are those of us that are willing to bear insufferable pain, all to achieve their highest form. And then there's the rest of the world, fragile creatures, porcelain dolls, the unscuplted masses. All too scared to bear the burden. Pain is the seed of power. If you can not tolerate it, you should not compete with those who will.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

For Penina Mezei petrify motive in folk literature stems from ancient, mythical layers of culture that has undergone multiple transformations lost the original meaning. Therefore, the origin of this motif in the narrative folklore can be interpreted depending on the assumptions that you are the primary elements of faith in Petrify preserved , lost or replaced elements that blur the idea of integrity , authenticity and functionality of the old ones . Motif Petrify in different genres varies by type of actor’s individuality, time and space, properties and actions of its outcome, the relationship of the narrator and singers from the text. The particularity of Petrify in particular genres testifies about different possibilities and intentions of using the same folk beliefs about transforming, says Penina Mezei. In moralized ballads Petrify is temporary or eternal punishment for naughty usually ungrateful children. In the oral tradition, demonic beings are permanently Petrifying humans and animals. Petrify in fairy tales is temporary, since the victims, after entering into the forbidden demonic time and space or breaches of prescribed behavior in it, frees the hero who overcomes the demonic creature, emphasizes Mezei. Faith in the power of magical evocation of death petrifaction exists in curses in which the slanderer or ungrateful traitor wants to convert into stone. In search of the magical meaning of fatal events in fairy tales, however, it should be borne in mind that they concealed before, but they reveal the origin of the ritual. The work of stone - bedrock Penina Mezei pointed to the belief that binds the soul stone dead or alive beings. Penina speaks of stone medial position between earth and sky, earth and the underworld. Temporary or permanent attachment of the soul to stone represents a state between life and death will be punished its powers cannot be changed. Rescue petrified can only bring someone else whose power has not yet subjugated the demonic forces. While the various traditions demons Petrifying humans and animals, as long as in fairy tales, mostly babe, demon- old woman. Traditions brought by Penina Mezei , which describe Petrify people or animals suggest specific place events , while in fairy tales , of course , no luck specific place names . Still Penina spotted chthonic qualities babe, and Mezei’s with plenty of examples of comparative method confirmed that they were witches. Some elements of procedures for the protection of the witch could be found in oral stories and poems. Fairy tales keep track of violations few taboos - the hero , despite the ban on the entry of demonic place , comes in the woods , on top of a hill , in a demonic time - at night , and does not respect the behaviors that would protect him from demons . Interpreting the motives Petrify as punishment for the offense in the demon time and space depends on the choice of interpretive method is applied. In the book of fairy tales Penina Mezei writes: Petrify occurs as a result of unsuccessful contact with supernatural beings Petrify is presented as a metaphor for death (Penina Mezei West Bank Fairytales: 150). Psychoanalytic interpretation sees in the form of witches character, and the petrification of erotic seizure of power. Female demon seized fertilizing power of the masculine principle. By interpreting the archetypal witch would chthonic anima, anabaptized a devastating part unindividualized man. Ritual access to the motive of converting living beings into stone figure narrated narrative transfigured magical procedures some male initiation ceremonies in which the hero enters into a community of dedicated, or tracker sacrificial rites. Compelling witches to release a previously petrified could be interpreted as the initiation mark the conquest of certain healing powers and to encourage life force, highlights the Penina.

Motif Petrify in fairy tales, as multiple aesthetical, has complex origins and development. Forgotten Transformed ritual foundation motive is revealed in the ritual killing of old people. The cyclical myth dismissal of growth and decline is attributed to old people stopping power of life. In order to preserve the life force Penina points out that it took to destroy the creatures that personified their weakening. Mythological justification for the ritual murder of the demonized old lady is a representative of an old man’s death. In doing so, there is no risk of punishment or retaliation for the killing done, because in the moral and mythological plane victim turns into a bully who needs to catch up with retribution. Deeply rooted in the mythical magical notion of the sacred, ritual killing old people is not completely lost in the genres of oral tradition, but is largely hidden in fairy tales. Another basis Petrify in fairy tales is tied for proofing hero. In this type of Petrify emphasized the dependence of suffering from violations of the ban. Offense prohibiting turning into a demonic time and space, or prohibiting speech that is not necessarily related to the hazards arising from the proximity of the demons in lyrical songs, ballads, and some traditions and psychologically conditioned, but the tales he has not shown in the light of personal motives, since the clash of two sacred place in the framework of fulfilling the task of the hero. The power of the heroes in the face of a hostile beings Petrifying people in fairy tales to finalize a victory over the demon, a demon or a subsequent grace which frees the victim of the killed hero of his unfortunate fate, eventually expires Penina Mezei.

We are creatures full of creativity and curiosity so start every day with a purpose to accomplish something new, something that puts you a step closer to where you want to be, don’t let the days pass without a reason, without a purpose, each new day we are in this planet is a God given new opportunity to discover new things and to be creative. Don’t live other people’s dreams, create your own path, your own dream and always move forward. You will discover all you are capable of achieving once you push yourself to attain what you want, that is the magic of motivation. The life you want is the life you build and nothing gets built without action, determination and a strong motivation, so keep on going and always believe YOU CAN!

World is full of people so troubled they don’t even understand themselves. You could offer them a thousand dollars to explain their motivations, but they can’t tell you what they don’t know. And most of those miserable creatures find their

Gentle Sir Conan, I'll venture that few have been Half as prodigiously lucky as you have been. Fortune, the flirt! has been wondrously kind to you. Ever beneficent, sweet and refined to you. Doomed to the practise of physic and surgery, Yet, growing weary of pills and physicianing, Off to the Arctic you packed, expeditioning. Roving and dreaming, Ambition, that heady sin, Gave you a spirit too restless for medicine: That, I presume, as Romance is the quest of us, Made you an Author-the same as the rest of us. Ah, but the rest of us clamor distressfully, "How do you manage the game so successfully? Tell us, disclose to us how under Heaven you Squeeze from the inkpot so splendid a revenue!" Then, when you'd published your volume that vindicates England's South African raid (or the Syndicate's), Pleading that Britain's extreme bellicosity Wasn't (as most of us think) an atrocity Straightaway they gave you a cross with a chain to it (Oh, what an honor! I could not attain to it, Not if I lived to the age of Methusalem!) Made you a knight of St. John of Jerusalem! Faith! as a teller of tales you've the trick with you! Still there's a bone I've been wanting to pick with you: Holmes is your hero of drama and serial: All of us know where you dug the material! Whence he was moulded-'tis almost a platitude; Yet your detective, in shameless ingratitude Sherlock your sleuthhound with motives ulterior Sneers at Poe's "Dupin" as "very inferior!" Labels Gaboriau's clever "Lecoq," indeed, Merely "a bungler," a creature to mock, indeed! This, when your plots and your methods in story owe More than a trifle to Poe and Gaboriau, Sets all the Muses of Helicon sorrowing. Borrow, Sir Knight, but in decent borrowing! Still let us own that your bent is a cheery one, Little you've written to bore or to weary one, Plenty that's slovenly, nothing with harm in it, Give me detective with brains analytical Rather than weaklings with morals mephitical Stories of battles and man's intrepidity Rather than wails of neurotic morbidity! Give me adventures and fierce dinotheriums Rather than Hewlett's ecstatic deliriums! Frankly, Sir Conan, some hours I've eased with you And, on the whole, I am pretty well pleased with you

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn’t change so much anymore. It doesn’t change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven’t been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I’m human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It’s my shadow I see watching me. It’s my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on.

To begin with, let us recall the /J,adltlt which all our mysticr of Islam untiringly meditate, the �adltlt in which the Godhead reveals the secret of His passion ( his pathos): "I was a hidden Treasure and I yearned to be known. Then I created creatures in order to be known by them." With still greater fidelity to Ibn rArabi's thought, let us translate: "in order to become in them the object of my knowledge." This divine passion, this desire to reveal Himself and to know Himself in beings through being known by them, is the motive underlying an entire divine dramaturgy, an eternal cosmogony. This cosmogony is neither an Emanation in the Neoplatonic sense of the word nor, still less, a creatio ex niltilo. It is rather a succession of manifestations of being, brought about by an increasing light, within the originally undifferentiated God ; it is a succession of tajalliylit, of theophanies.15 This is the context of one of the most charac- teristic themes of Ibn rArabi's thinking, the doctrine of divine Names ( which has sometimes been termed, rather inexactly, his "mythology" of the divine Names).

Who knows what motivates the sort of greed-sotted creatures who run Bioteka or GeneCraft? The most likely explanation, however, is that the knowledge of how to activate these codes has escaped their makers, and that yesterday was a demonstration. If we accept this premise, then the answer to the second question is obvious: our national government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the biotech industry. In

Animation. Enthusiasm. Sincerity. Excitement. Acceptance. Have I just described your family dog? You’re happy to see him because he is so happy to see you. It is no wonder dogs are called “Man’s Best Friend” with attributes like that. Their natural propensity for joy makes them among the most personable and friendly creatures on the planet. Human beings could learn a thing or two from their eager and earnest approach to life.

We are all creatures of habit, and when we make any change in our daily or weekly routine, we feel it. But soon your workout will become not only a reliable part of your day but a "must" on your to-do list.

We are biological beings, shaped by genetic inheritance and the organization and health of our neurological structures. We have rich inner lives of diverse dispositions, motivations, cognitive abilities and processes, intrapsychic dynamics, and reinforcement histories. We are also social creatures, affected by our social and cultural environments. Together these elements help us understand normal phenomena (like memory construction, neurological function, and social attraction) and abnormal psychological occurrences (such as pseudo-memories, Alzheimer’s disease, and dysfunctional relationships). Unfortunately, much of the work on the

The society is neurotic – it is a fact – no conscientious creature can deny it. But my question to you is – what are you doing to obliterate this neuroticism for good?

We must free ourselves from this prison that restricts our personal desires by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

When man encounters God there are necessarily three perspectives involved in this meeting: the normative or the standard, as God is everywhere Lord; the locus in which the nature of God’s authority is made known, or the situational perspective; and the subjectivity of man as the creaturely receptor, or the existential motivational-subjective perspective.

If the human race ever wishes to master time travel then the answer is through chemical and not mechanical means. Speed is time travel. It will pilfer away at the space-time around you without your consent, propelling you forward through time. The human body is a vehicle of flux. It is exhilarating to move rhythmically, pulsing, stepping through pockets of your existence in fluid motions. The time that speed steals from you, it gives back with interest, cold and hard on a Monday morning. It brings with it a terrifying despair that creeps upon you. It is a black, slow-motion suicide. The ceiling begins to drip and ooze grey-brown sludge. Aural hallucinations, the demons of psychosis, speak wordless words of pure dread... Sometimes I would laugh and giggle hysterically at inane nonsensical stories that would play out in my mind. I would watch them unfold, like a lucid dream, weird images, Boschian forms, twisted nightmares... And I would weep. I would weep for nothing with salty tears, rivers of anguish and existential pain running down my face, dripping quietly onto the carpet. Day after day, I would unravel myself, dissect, and analyse my life over and over until I was exhausted and insane. Speed is not an insightful drug. It will not delude you into a false sense of spirituality like hallucinogens. It is the aftermath and the come down from speed that will rip open your ego and show you the bare, horrible bones of yourself. It will open the beautiful black doorway inside you and it will show you nothing. Through the darkness of internal isolation, the amphetamine comedown will show you no god, no spirituality, no soul, just your own perishable flesh, and your own animal self-preservation. It will show you clearly just how ugly you really are inside. In the emptiness of yourself, there is only the knowledge of your eventual death. When you have truly faced yourself and recognised yourself as purely animal then you become liberated from the societal pretence that you are above or better than any other creature. You are a human animal. You are naturally motivated to be selfish. Everything you do, every act you partake of, is in its essence an act of survival. No act of the human-animal happens without the satisfaction of the ego’s position in existence…

It is almost incredible that the malice and blindness of man can go so far; but yet, alas! How many there are who for a base pleasure, for an imaginary point of honor, for a vile and sordid interest, continually offend this Sovereign Goodness! There are others who go further and sin without any of these motives, through pure malice or habit. Oh! Incomprehensible blindness! Oh! More than brute stupidity! Oh! Rashness! Oh! Folly worthy of demons! What is the chastisement proportioned to the crime of those who thus despise their Maker? Surely none other than that which these senseless creatures will receive – the eternal fire of Hell.

Human beings are not primarily thinking creatures. We are creatures driven by our loves.

These inferences are the signature characteristic of something called Theory of Mind. We activate it all the time. We try to see our entire world in terms of motivations, ascribing motivations to our pets and even to inanimate objects. The skill is useful for selecting a mate, for navigating the day-to-day issues surrounding living together, for parenting. Theory of Mind is something humans have like no other creature. It is as close to mind reading as we are likely to get.

In his searing work Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, philosopher David Livingstone Smith explains how this occurs: We are innately biased against outsiders. This bias is seized upon and manipulated by indoctrination and propaganda to motivate men and women to slaughter one another. This is done by inducing men to regard their enemies as subhuman creatures, which overrides their natural, biological inhibitions against killing. So dehumanization has the specific function of unleashing aggression in war. This is a cultural process, not a biological one, but it has to ride piggyback on biological adaptations in order to be effective.9,10

We said it is impossible for man to feel "right" in any straightforward way, and now we can see why. He can expand his self-feeling not only by Agape merger but also by the other ontological motive Eros, the urge for more life, for exciting experience, for the development of the self-powers, for developing the uniqueness of the individual creature, the impulsion to stick out of nature and shine. Life is, after all, a challenge to the creature, a fascinating opportunity to expand. Psychologically it is the urge for individuation: how do I realize my distinctive gifts, make my own contribution to the world through my own self-expansion?

Never forget: loving, respecting; tolerances in your fellow-creature is a the lonely way of living free en gracefully and beautifully , and forever, never stop dreaming ,believing ,hoping and smiling and your be the most free in this slave world

Don't feel like you need all the expensive art tools in order to be creative!

The Jains have created a complex system of biological knowledge. It is a system that includes concepts of physiology, morphology, and modes of reproduction, but its main focus is taxonomy. It should not be thought of as a system of scientific analysis. Its basic motivation is soteriological, and the system may be seen as a conceptual scaffolding for the Jain vision of creaturely bondage and the path to liberation

our misperceptions interfere with compromise. We are overconfident creatures. We also assume others think like us, value the same things we do, and see the world the same way. And we demonize our enemies and attribute to them the worst motives. We hold on to all sorts of mistaken beliefs, even in big groups, and when we do, it hijacks our ability to find a bargain we and our enemies can agree to. Competition and conflict make all

For Homer, glory was the only thing that was truly imperishable. Only the glorious live on after death, in the memories and stories of humanity. Glory is the only meaningful form of immortality. The abject creature that lives on in the underworld holds no appeal. In fact, Homer’s theology demands a dismal afterlife. That way, the heroes are fully motivated to achieve glory here and now. What else is there to aim for? The grim persistence of the soul after death is in every way unappealing. Do you want a mediocre life and an even more mediocre death?

Faith in Christ will make us a new creature, a new person in Christ, and a temple of the Holy Spirit. Faith in Christ will make us a child of God, sealed as God's chosen. Faith in Christ will make us to have, inheritance in God's kingdom Faith in Christ can calm the troubled sea, and can move mountains.

Will We Become Angels? I’m often asked if people, particularly children, become angels when they die. The answer is no. Death is a relocation of the same person from one place to another. The place changes, but the person remains the same. The same person who becomes absent from his or her body becomes present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5: 8). The person who departs is the one who goes to be with Christ (Philippians 1: 23). Angels are angels. Humans are humans. Angels are beings with their own histories and memories, with distinct identities, reflected in the fact that they have personal names, such as Michael and Gabriel. Under God’s direction, they serve us on Earth (Hebrews 1: 14). Michael the archangel serves under God, and the other angels, in various positions, serve under Michael (Daniel 10: 13; Revelation 12: 7). In Heaven human beings will govern angels (1 Corinthians 6: 2-3). The fact that angels have served us on Earth will make meeting them in Heaven particularly fascinating. They may have been with us from childhood, protecting us, standing by us, doing whatever they could on our behalf (Matthew 18: 10). They may have witnessed virtually every moment of our lives. Besides God himself, no one could know us better. What will it be like not only to have them show us around the intermediate Heaven but also to walk and talk with them on the New Earth? What stories will they tell us, including what really happened that day at the lake thirty-five years ago when we almost drowned? They’ve guarded us, gone to fierce battle for us, served as God’s agents in answer to prayers. How great it will be to get to know these brilliant ancient creatures who’ve lived with God from their creation. We’ll consult them as well as advise them, realizing they too can learn from us, God’s image-bearers. Will an angel who guarded us be placed under our management? If we really believed angels were with us daily, here and now, wouldn’t it motivate us to make wiser choices? Wouldn’t we feel an accountability to holy beings who serve us as God’s representatives? Despite what some popular books say, there’s no biblical basis for trying to make contact with angels now. We’re to ask God, not angels, for wisdom (James 1: 5). As Scripture says and as I portray in my novels Dominion, Lord Foulgrin’s Letters, and The Ishbane Conspiracy, Satan’s servants can “masquerade as servants of righteousness” and bring us messages that appear to be from God but aren’t (2 Corinthians 11: 15). Nevertheless, because Scripture teaches that one or more of God’s angels may be in the room with me now, every once in a while I say “Thank you” out loud. And sometimes I add, “I look forward to meeting you.” I can’t wait to hear their stories. We won’t be angels, but we’ll be with angels—and that’ll be far better. Will We Have Emotions? In Scripture, God is said to enjoy, love, laugh, take delight, and rejoice, as well as be angry, happy, jealous, and glad. Rather than viewing these actions and descriptors as mere anthropomorphisms, we should consider that our emotions are derived from God’s. While we should always avoid creating God in our image, the fact remains we are created in his. Therefore, our emotions are a reflection of and sometimes (because of our sin) a distortion of God’s emotions. To be like God means to have and express emotions. Hence, we should expect that in Heaven

She spoke to a woman whose strong, charismatic presence proclaimed her a noteworthy force within this group. The motivators were always easy to spot. The woman was tall, with a fierce, beautiful face, her functional khaki clothes draped with bright, fringed shawls. Ari was entranced by this dashing creature who stroke from menhir to menhir, running her long, strong fingers over the circuits, her thick, red hair wrapped up in a colourful scarf.

hypothesis’ could provide the missing piece of evolutionary motivation for the grandmother hypothesis to work in other menopausal creatures, like us.

I want to know what kinds of transformation the cuttlefish is capable of when it is motivated not by fear but by community and sex, and I am not interested in calling it a disguise.

The following is a quotation from the Mahābhārata that describes our present era and the immediately preceding yuga, revealing a progressive deterioration of humanity’s moral fiber. Again, in the dvāpara-yuga the moral order (dharma) exists [only] half. [God] Vishnu becomes yellow, and the Veda is now fourfold [i.e., the original wisdom is split into the four Vedic hymnodies]. Thence, some [adhere to] four Vedas, others to three Vedas, or two Vedas, or a single Veda, while yet others have no hymns [at all]. Thus, owing to the broken traditions, rites become manifold and creatures, fond of austerities and almsgiving, become rajas-motivated2. Due to ignorance about the single Veda, the Vedas become multiple and because of the collapse of truth, few adhere to truthfulness. Many diseases appear for those who have fallen from truth, and there are desires and disasters caused by fate. Afflicted by these, [some] men perform very severe austerities; others, filled with [worldly] desires or desiring heaven, conduct sacrifices. Thus with the onset of the dvāpara, creatures perish through their lawlessness. In the kali-yuga, O Kaunteya, the moral order (dharma) exists by one quarter only. With the onset of this tamas-motivated3 age, O Keshava [i.e., God Vishnu] becomes black (krishna). The Vedic ways of life end, and so do the moral order, sacrifice, and rites. Plagues, disease, sloth, blemishes such as anger, as well as calamities, sickness, and afflictions prevail. In the course of the yugas, the moral order diminishes increasingly. With the diminution of the moral order, the people (loka) diminish. This description of the kali-yuga is not as daunting as it is in some other scriptures. But the message is clear enough: Ours is a sinister age. What thinking person would not agree? Can we not, by now, fill a whole library with tales of human foolishness, of humanity’s thoughtless interference with the life-world and its almost unbelievable lack of concern for fellow beings, both human and nonhuman? Is there no hope, then, for humankind? Is historian Oswald Spengler’s dark prophecy of the decline of the West (and with it, also of the East) coming true?4 Or are there, today, forces at work that countermand the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age? This latter appears to be the case. It could not be otherwise. Or else our species would have perished long ago, right at the outset of the kali-yuga. The kali-yuga, then, does not signal total spiritual darkness or inevitable doom. Inverting a popular maxim, one can perhaps say that where there is shadow there is also light. Here and there, the present dark age is pierced by shafts of light. It is not without its benign counterbalancing influences.

It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.

The concept of a best self is dubious. Best implies a definitive conclusion, but we are not static creatures. We can’t achieve a state of perfection, nor should we strive to. We are spectacularly volatile, adaptable, highly attuned organisms—and what we need and want changes over time.

Politics: “Poli” a Latin word meaning “many”; and "tics" meaning “bloodsucking creatures”. -Robin Williams (1951 – 2014)

It was a peculiarity of Smiley's character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end. A stringent critic of his own motives, he had discovered after long observation that he tended to be less a creature of intellect than his tastes and habits might suggest; once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust.

Praise God, the Creator, who gives food to all living creatures.

Chapter 57 “Sounds like a strange grouping,” one marketing expert said from beside Nadine. “Cults, revolutions, and religions. All very different creatures.” “Not at all. The only significant difference is the motivator for the action. A cult is a religion that doesn’t gain popular acceptance. Revolutions follow a government or policy instead of a god. Religion centres around a god that becomes accepted by enough people to gain credibility.

We are all messed up creatures trying to find our way through life.

African mythology is integral to this story. Learning about Senegalese fairies, the African version of a unicorn, the bultungin shape-shifters of the Kanem-Bornu Empire, and the Ninki Nanka river monster only added to my motivation. Black gods, goddesses, mermaids, and other creatures both deadly and magnificent … and all with African origins. Creating a story blending these and West African history became a passionate obsession.

A miracle not only disrupts, but also most often negates or reverses a creature's natural evolution. To the believer who readily accepts God's dominion over this world, miracles are quite conceivable. God rules over his creation and may intervene when and as he sees fit. Most often, his motives for doing so are not of this world.

Despite mournful envy and Dejected wrath, We bask under blue skies, Bewitching stars, And mystical moons, Loving rumbles of thunder, Glistening raindrops, And a hazy peaceful sunrise. In the face of Sorrowful greed, We delight in magnificent mountains, Bountiful oceans, Turquoise lagoons, Beautiful blossoms, And the green, green grass Of springtime. Through raging anger, Aching sadness, We treasure radiant sunsets, Seek marble courtyards, Ancient architecture, And splendid arched bridges. We sing the praises of Breathtaking falls. Even crushed And bewildered, We are captivated by Exquisite winged creatures, Tropical forests, And the critters we nurture. We embrace the power in our divinity And the superb magic of everything. With every threat to the world We belong to And embrace, We revel in books and dreams. We’re mesmerized by Otherworldly visions And plentiful hues. We cherish The light in ever-curious Truth seekers, And are ever grateful For smiles, Rapturous affection, Laughter, And love.

It actually consists in knowing the infinite greatness and goodness of God, together with a true sense of our own weakness and tendency to evil, in loving God and hating ourselves, in humbling ourselves not only before Him, but, for His sake, before all men, in renouncing entirely our own will in order to follow His. It consists, finally, in doing all of this solely for the glory of His holy name, for only one purpose—to please Him, for only one motive—that He should be loved and served by all His creatures. These are the dictates of that law of love which the Holy Ghost has written on the hearts of the faithful. This is the way we must practice that self-denial so earnestly recommended by our Saviour in the Gospel.

Is this the inner truth behind why faeries who deal with mortals tend to specialize in glamours? Could they be said to be the only mode of defense when interacting with a creature that can hide motivations and tell untruths? Are glamours actually a form of untruth or are they instead the use of magic to highlight and underline truths, bringing those truths to human eyes through the use of enchantment? If this is the case then a glamour would temporarily initiate a human being into a faerie way of seeing the world. Such as when Robert Kirk tells us of the Faerie Seers placing one hand upon the head and one on the foot of another to share the Sight with them. A skill like this could be used either to befuddle a human or induct them into a new world. To paraphrase Dali, like art, glamours are lies that help us see the truth. Pause for a moment to consider this idea, and the truly alien perspective on life you would have if you existed in such a world. Remember when you do that time passes differently in Faerie, that you no longer have the burden of time weighing on you, waiting to age you, the spectre of human death before you. That you possess, perhaps, a tongue that not only cannot lie but a mind with no proper understanding of being able to conceal truth. When you encounter a creature that does lie and cheat your only defense in the face of it is to mirror their own nature back at them with an enchantment, dazzle them with their own greed.

There is an important insight contained in the book of Genesis, concerning the loss of eros when the body takes over. Adam and Eve have partaken of the forbidden fruit, and obtained the ‘knowledge of good and evil’ – in other words the ability to invent for themselves the code that governs their behaviour. God walks in the garden and they hide, conscious for the first time of their bodies as objects of shame. This ‘shame of the body’ is an extraordinary feeling, and one that no animal could conceivably have. It is a recognition of the body as in some way alien – the thing that has wandered into the world of objects as though of its own accord, to become the victim of uninvited glances. Adam and Eve have become conscious that they are not only face to face, but joined in another way, as bodies, and the objectifying gaze of lust now poisons their once innocent desire. Milton’s description of this transition, from the pure eros that preceded the fall, to the polluted lust that followed it, is one of the great psychological triumphs in English literature. But how brilliantly and succinctly does the author of Genesis cover the same transition! By means of the fig leaf Adam and Eve are able to rescue each other from the worst: to ensure, however tentatively, that they can still be face to face, even if the erotic has now been privatized and attached to the private parts. In his well-known fresco of the expulsion from Paradise, Masaccio shows the distinction between the two shames – that of the body, which causes Eve to hide her sexual parts, and that of the soul, which causes Adam to hide his face. Like the girl in Goya’s picture, Adam hides the self; Eve shows the self in all its confused grief, but still protects the body – for that, she now knows, can be tainted by others’ eyes. I have dwelt on the phenomenon of the erotic because it illustrates the importance of the face, and what is conveyed by the face, in our personal encounters, even in those encounters motivated by what many think to be a desire that we share with other animals, and which arises directly from the reproductive strategies of our genes. In my view sexual desire, as we humans experience it, is an inter-personal response – one that presupposes self-consciousness in both subject and object, and which singles out its target as a free and responsible individual, able to give and withhold at will. It has its perverted forms, but it is precisely the inter-personal norm that enables us to describe them as perverted. Sexual relations between members of other species have, materially speaking, much in common with those between people. But from the intentional point of view they are entirely different. Even those creatures who mate for life, like wolves and geese, are not animated by promises, by devotion that shines in the face, or by the desire to unite with the other, who is another like me. Human sexual endeavour is morally weighted, as no animal endeavour can be. And its focus on the individual is mediated by the thought of that individual as a subject, who freely chooses, and in whose first person pespective I appear as he or she appears in mine. To put it simply, and in the language of the Torah, human sexuality belongs in the realm of the covenant.

Above all, consider the merits and sufferings of Christ, which are our principal title to God's grace and mercy, and which form the treasure whence the Church supplies the necessities of her children. It was from a confidence inspired by such motives that the saints drew that strength which rendered them as firm as Mount Sion, and established them in the holy city whence they never could be moved. (Cf. Ps. 124:1). Yet, notwithstanding these powerful reasons for hope, it is deplorable that this virtue should still be so weak in us. We lose heart at the first appearance of danger, and go down into Egypt hoping for help from Pharaoh (Cf. Is. 30:2) – that is, we turn to creatures instead of God. There are many servants of God who zealously devote themselves to fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, but few who possess the confidence with which the virtuous ï Susanna was animated, even when condemned to death and led to execution. (Cf. Dan. 13). Read the Holy Scriptures, particularly the Psalms and the writings of the prophets, and you will find abundant motives for unfailing hope in God.

What is your opinion of Lady Helen?” he asked as Quincy arranged the meal on the table in front of him. “She is the jewel of the Ravenels,” Quincy said. “A more kind-hearted girl you’ll never meet. Sadly, she’s always been overlooked. Her older brother received the lion’s share of her parents’ interest, and what little was left went to the twins.” Rhys had met the twins a few days earlier, both of them bright-eyed and amusing, asking a score of questions about his department store. He had liked the girls well enough, but neither of them had captured his interest. They were nothing close to Helen, whose reserve was mysterious and alluring. She was like a mother-of-pearl shell that appeared to be one color, but from different angles revealed delicate shimmers of lavender, pink, blue, green. A beautiful exterior that revealed little of its true nature. “Is she aloof with all strangers?” he asked, arranging a napkin on his lap. “Or is it only with me?” “Aloof?” The valet sounded genuinely surprised. Before he could continue, a pair of small black spaniels entered the parlor, panting happily as they bounded up to Rhys. “Good heavens,” he muttered with a frown. Rhys, who happened to like dogs, didn’t mind the interruption. What he found disconcerting, however, was the third animal that trotted into the room after them and sat assertively by his chair. “Quincy,” Rhys asked blankly, “why is there a pig in the parlor?” The valet, who was busy shooing the dogs from the room, said distractedly, “A family pet, sir. They try to keep him in the barn, but he will insist on coming into the house.” “But why--” Rhys broke off, realizing that regardless of the explanation, it would make no sense to him. “Why is it,” he asked instead, “that if I kept livestock in my home, people would say I was ignorant or daft, but if a pig wanders freely in the mansion of an earl, it’s called eccentric?” “There are three things that everyone expects of an aristocrat,” the valet replied, tugging firmly at the pig’s collar. “A country house, and a weak chin, and eccentricity.” He pushed and pulled at the pig with increasing determination, but the creature only sat more heavily. “I vow,” the valet wheezed, budging him only an inch at a time, “I’ll have you turned into sausage and collops by tomorrow’s breakfast!” Ignoring the determined valet, the pig stared up at Rhys with patient, hopeful eyes. “Quincy,” Rhys said, “look sharp.” He picked up a bread roll from his plate and tossed it casually in the air. The valet caught it deftly in a white-gloved hand. “Thank you, sir.” As he walked to the door with the bread in hand, the pig trotted after him. Rhys watched with a faint smile. “Desire,” he said, “is always better motivation than fear. Remember that, Quincy.

Can you build weapons? The weapons that could maraud all perverted creatures on Earth.

Could it be that the cannabinoid network is precisely the sort of adaptation that natural selection would favor in the evolution of a creature who survives by hunting? A brain chemical that sharpens the senses, narrows your mental focus, allows you to forget everything extraneous to the task at hand (including physical discomfort and the passage of time), and makes you hungry would seem to be the perfect pharmacological tool for man the hunter. All at once it provides the motive, the reward, and the optimal mind-set for hunting.

The Law of Attraction states that the more you complain, the more things will come that you will complain about. Think about this logic and consider the opposite. In its very essence, the Law states the more you are grateful for the things around you, the more things will come that you can be grateful for. So the first step in practicing gratitude is to stop complaining. When you dread your debt, the more debt will come. If you feel negative things with all of your attention, then the more negative things will come. Going back, stop complaining and put all your attention to the things that you should be grateful about. It’s wrong to say that you have no blessings. As a matter of fact, you are abundant with blessings. You are a creature that is full of goodness, destined to prosperity!

Humiliation Cannot Be Done By Respectable People, They Don't Have Any Such Behavior To Give You, Humiliation Can Only Be Given By Disrespectful People, Who Doesn't Have Any Point Of Respect In Them, They Have They Can Only Owe You The Same, Stop Giving Attention To Those Third-Rated Creatures, You Have To Become Deff To Them To Create A Pearl Of Wisdom.

...it was only natural that this mutual connection between sea and observer be forged: they were kindred spirits. The same, however, could not be done with the implacable moon: that imperious stalwart, which agitated the currents and spurned its beholder. This aloof satellite was formidable, yet neurotic, and so in spite of its ferocity, its movements were simple to predict, thereby granting this fearsome creature a veil of placidity. Its magnitude of torque was easily outmatched by that forceful heave of fear portending any misalignment with its anticipated schedule of phases. It cycled through these on time and without hesitation, experiencing, all the while, a wide array of emotions in response to the dissatisfied countenance of the Master it served. And yet, these changes in mood remained prosaic and careful, dutiful to its Patron; thusly, betraying nothing of its own resentments or intentionality either to its dismissed observer or to its demanding Patron, divulging nothing even of the influence which it potentially wielded over the Patron Planet, but which, in its lunar insecurity, never reached full expression save for the idle touslings of liquid fur. Perhaps it was diffident or bashful—otherwise, it was simple and had little prevailing ambition. Its motives were immaterial, in fact, for its aspirations were easily eclipsed and often countermanded and so one could not help but anticipate in its withered mien a certain resignation, a retreat to introspection away from the gazes of those who mistook its surrender to deterministic forces as a duty held most solemn. To be sure, it was a specter oft-romanticized by dullard poets and priests who admired it for its calming reserve, its gentle wisdom in juxtaposition with the histrionic impatience of the sea: like a tired guardian and a screaming toddler with primacy afforded counterintuitively to the guardian. What mattered more, in fact, was the subject of its influence: the willful and disobedient medium which spurned that hands that molded it. The moldings were more like jostles really and for a time they felt just and reasonable, but soon they came to confine and until verily there was no movement available that was not otherwise preordained by the will of the master. The accursed moon!

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it’s dead. But we’re allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures.

Are you out of your skull? Look around! This is Eden; this is paradise! God knows exactly what he is doing. He made everything; he even made me. My husband loves me and I love him—and we are both intoxicated with the joy and holiness of our beloved Maker. My very being resonates with the desire to reflect something of his spectacular glory back to him. How could I possibly question his wisdom and love? He knows, in a way I never can, exactly what is best—and I trust him absolutely. And you want me to doubt him or question the purity of his motives and character? How idiotic is that? Besides, what possible good can come of a creature defying his Creator and Sovereign? Are you out of your skull?

It is asked, what motives an Atheist can have to do good? The motive to please himself and his fellow-creatures; to live happily and peaceably; to gain the affection and esteem of men. "Can he, who fears not the gods, fear any thing?" He can fear men; he can fear contempt, dishonour, the punishment of the laws; in short, he can fear himself, and the remorse felt by all those who are conscious of having incurred or merited the hatred of their fellow-creatures.

Never underestimate your own strength. We humans are resilient, strong creatures, able to bounce back from the brink time and again. We are not at the mercy of externals. Ever. It's only our thoughts that have us feeling like rudderless ships.

Perhaps the greatest distance runner on earth, Homo erectus was the unsurpassed marvel of its time. No other creature has ever contrasted more starkly with all the animals that had ever lived. Neanderthalensis and sapiens were born from and first lived in the shadow of erectus. We were not new. They were. Sapiens are just the improved model of Homo. Erectus was the first to journey. They were the original imagination-motivated travellers.

Favoritism is but made by God; in all creatures, He built it in their blood, like a cow suckling only her own calves, the crowd cheering the team of their own club. Hence, if you'll be faced with a dilemma: "Save your child or the child of some fella," don't you defy what God dictates is right, lest you be haunted in your deepest night!

Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men.” – Benjamin Disraeli

IN ORDER TO INCLINE our will to fulfill exactly the will of God and to promote His glory, let us remember that He has set the example by loving and honoring us in a thousand different ways. He created us out of nothing, after His own likeness, and He subordinated all other things to our use. In our redemption He passed by the most brilliant Angel to choose His only Son, Who paid the price of the world, not with perishable gold or silver, but with His sacred blood in a death as cruel as it was wretched. He continually guards us from the fury of our enemies, He fights for us with His grace, and, to nourish and strengthen us, He is always ready to feed us with the Precious Body of His Son in the Sacrament of the Altar. Do not these constitute convincing proofs of God’s tremendous love for us? Who can understand the immensity of His love for such wretched creatures? What should be our gratitude towards so generous a benefactor! If the great men of the world think they are obliged to do something in return for the respect paid them, even by those inferior as to position and wealth, what return ought not the very worms of the earth make when honored with such remarkable love and esteem by the sovereign Lord of the Universe? In particular, we must never forget that His majesty is infinitely worthy of our service, a service motivated by a single principle of love, whose only object is His will and desire.

Gabriel Duke. You are a complete hypocrite." "A hypocrite? Me?" "Yes, you. Mr. I-Know-a-Hidden-Tresaure-When-I-See-It. You said you know how to spot undervalued things. Undervalued people. And yet you persist in selling yourself short. If I'm the crown jewels in camouflage, you're a..." She churned the air with one hand. "... a diamond tiara." He grimaced. "Fine, you can be something manlier. A thick, knobby scepter. Will that suffice?" "I suppose it's an improvement." "For weeks, you've been insisting you haven't the slightest idea what it means to give a creature a loving home. 'I'm too ruthless, Penny. I'm only motivated by self-interest, Penny. I'm a bad, bad man, Penny.' And all this time, you've been running an orphanage? I could kick you." "I'm not running an orphanage. I give the orphanage money. That's all." "You gave them kittens." "No, you gave them kittens." "You sent them gifts at Christmas. Playthings and sweets and geese to be roasted for their dinner." "It was the only business I could attend to on Christmas, and I don't like to waste the day. All the banks and offices are closed." She skewered him with a look. "Really. You expect me to believe that?" He pushed a hand through his hair. "What is your aim with this interrogation?" "I want you to admit the truth. You are giving those children a home. A place of warmth and safety, and yes, even love. Meanwhile, you are stubbornly denying yourself all the same things." "I can't be denying myself if it's something I don't want." "Home isn't something a person wants. It's something every last one of us needs. And it's not too late for you, Gabriel." She gentled her voice. "You could have that for yourself.

and perfections of your fellow creatures, being as glad to see any of their good actions as your own. God is as well pleased with their well-doings as with yours. You ought to desire that everything that is wise and holy and good may be performed in as high a manner by other people as by yourself. Let this therefore be your only motive and incentive to all good actions, honest industry, and business – to do everything in as perfect and excellent a manner as you can, for this reason: because it is pleasing to God, who loves you and desires your perfection. When I am dead, my son, you will be master of all my estate, which will be a great deal more than the necessities of one family require. Therefore, as you are to be charitable to the souls of men and wish them the same

If we reflect on our natures, we see that we’re rational, and this obligates us to treat each other as equals because we are “equal by nature.”707 She says it’s something we can know just by feeling. Cockburn says that, as emotional creatures, we’re motivated to care for one another.708

[...] advertisers soon came to realize that consumers were not “infinitely malleable.” [...] As they became more and more convinced that the consumer was motivated by nonrational and even irrational buying appeals, they were forced to consider the nature of desire and where those desires came from. [...] they began to realize that consumption patterns varied widely from the objective circumstances dictated by a real world and were more influenced by unacknowledged desires. These desires, however, were radically limited in number and had only a tenuous connection to a product, but that connection could be strengthened by conditioning. It was at this point that the advertisers began to see sex as a marketing strategy. Man was not “infinitely malleable”; he was a rational creature with a tenuous hold on his passions, which were limited in number, sex being one of the most easily manipulated. Success in advertising meant, therefore, using the conditioned reflex to attach a particular product to the consumer’s sexual passion.

Crime in London no longer has any motive, I told myself, peering at the skyline through my binoculars. Hooded youths will emerge from the shadows and plunge a knife into your groin, or shatter your bones with iron bars, or beat you to a coma in a park at night, raping your every orifice, all for no reason whatsoever. This new breed of London thug takes pride in its absence of motive, I reflected; motive is shame to the contemporary London thug, a creature whose thirst for cruelty is without limit.

And so she signed on, not knowing, surely, what is now quite clear to us: that she was about to create one of the enduring archetypes of the American screen, the noir female. Certainly this creature had her antecedents in the vamps of the silent screen. But they tended to be European in origin, and to hide their schemings under a highly romantic manner. It might also be argued that there were hints of what was to come in figures like Mary Astor's Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (though she, of course, affected a genteel disguise for her true motives). But really the bluntness and hardness of Stanwyck's work was something essentially new, and the alacrity with which it was imitated in film after film of the 40s is one of the interesting, largely unexplored questions of our movie and social history. It surely had something to do with the freedom American women claimed for themselves during the war years, and the nervousness that stirred among males - especially males who were absent at the front and concerned about the fidelity of the girls they left behind. Hard to keep them down on the farm (or behind a suburban picket fence) after they had found work in the rough atmosphere of factories, known the joys of living alone and, for that matter, going to bars alone. Phyllis Dietrichson did none of those things, but she had been a working woman and she was clearly capable of - putting it mildly - a high degree of self-sufficiency.

I am — and will never, this side of the resurrection, be more than — a creature of dust. I will rest content in my creaturely weakness; I will use the means God has given me to keep going in this life while I can; I will allow myself time to sleep; I will trust him enough to take a day off each week; I will invest in friendships and not be a proud loner; I will take with gladness the inward refreshment he offers me. I will serve the Lord Jesus with a glad and restful zeal, with all the energy that he works within me; but not with anxious toil, selfish ambition, the desire for the praise of people, and all the other ugly motivations that will destroy my soul. So help me God.

Kenneth Matthews confessed: ‘I may attempt to describe the Greek but I do not profess to understand him. He is a creature of a different blood, begotten under different conjunctions of the stars. His motives are often obscure to me, his actions romantic, excessive, preposterous and unpredictable.

During the last 200 years, industrial production methods became the mainstay of agriculture. Machines such as tractors began to undertake tasks that were previously performed by muscle power, or not performed at all. Fields and animals became vastly more productive thanks to artificial fertilisers, industrial insecticides and an entire arsenal of hormones and medications. Refrigerators, ships and aeroplanes have made it possible to store produce for months, and transport it quickly and cheaply to the other side of the world. Europeans began to dine on fresh Argentinian beef and Japanese sushi. Even plants and animals were mechanised. Around the time that Homo sapiens was elevated to divine status by humanist religions, farm animals stopped being viewed as living creatures that could feel pain and distress, and instead came to be treated as machines. Today these animals are often mass-produced in factory-like facilities, their bodies shaped in accordance with industrial needs. They pass their entire lives as cogs in a giant production line, and the length and quality of their existence is determined by the profits and losses of business corporations. Even when the industry takes care to keep them alive, reasonably healthy and well fed, it has no intrinsic interest in the animals' social and psychological needs (except when these have a direct impact on production). Egg-laying hens, for example, have a complex world of behavioural needs and drives. They feel strong urges to scout their environment, forage and peck around, determine social hierarchies, build nests and groom themselves. But the egg industry often locks the hens inside tiny coops, and it is not uncommon for it to squeeze four hens to a cage, each given a floor space of about 10 by 8.5 inches. The hens receive sufficient food, but they are unable to claim a territory, build a nest or engage in other natural activities. Indeed, the cage is so small that hens are often unable even to flap their wings or stand fully erect. Pigs are among the most intelligent and inquisitive of mammals, second perhaps only to the great apes. Yet industrialised pig farms routinely confine nursing sows inside such small crates that they are literally unable to turn around (not to mention walk or forage). The sows are kept in these crates day and night for four weeks after giving birth. Their offspring are then taken away to be fattened up and the sows are impregnated with the next litter of piglets. Many dairy cows live almost all their allotted years inside a small enclosure; standing, sitting and sleeping in their own urine and excrement. They receive their measure of food, hormones and medications from one set of machines, and get milked by another set of machines. The cow in the middle is treated as little more than a mouth that takes in raw materials and an udder that produces a commodity. Treating living creatures possessing complex emotional worlds as if they were machines is likely to cause them not only physical discomfort, but also much social stress and psychological frustration. Just as the Atlantic slave trade did not stem from hatred towards Africans, so the modern animal industry is not motivated by animosity. Again, it is fuelled by indifference. Most people who produce and consume eggs, milk and meat rarely stop to think about the fate of the chickens, cows or pigs whose flesh and emissions they are eating. Those who do think often argue that such animals are really little different from machines, devoid of sensations and emotions, incapable of suffering. Ironically, the same scientific disciplines which shape our milk machines and egg machines have lately demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that mammals and birds have a complex and emotional make-up. They not only feel physical pain, but can also suffer from emotional distress.

Change is a creature: tameable, but never ownable.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity. Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas

Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection wecan catch excellence.

His stepfather always watched me closely. He saw the wariness one learns from being neglected—eating too fast, being overly grateful, always knowing who was in the house: their motivations, moods, and locations. With his stepson he was attentive. With me, on the occasions when our paths crossed privately, he spoke with the gentle unavailability one reserves for creatures that are wounded and backed into a corner.