Crisis Core Quotes

The core problem isn’t the fact that we’re lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God. We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way. We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He’s great and deserves to be the center of our lives.

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo. Find new ways to see. Never expect a silver bullet. Get your hands dirty. Listen with empathy and overcommunicate with transparency. Tell your story, refusing to let others define you. Use authentic experiences to inspire. Stick to your values, they are your foundation. Hold people accountable, but give them the tools to succeed. Make the tough choices; it's how you execute that counts. Be decisive in times of crisis. Be nimble. Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes. Be responsible for what you see, hear, and do. Believe.

It was at this time that I was reminded of the chain of support that keeps a sufferer afloat – the person at the core of a crisis needs the support of their family and best friends, while those people need support from their friends, partners and family. Then even those people twice removed might need to talk to someone about it too. It takes a village to mend a broken heart.

The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you should be successful at twenty-six, when really it takes most writers much longer to get there.

Any attempt to solve a conflict has to touch upon its very core; the core, more often than not, lies in its history.

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency. Across the West, this was the most glorious boon of World War I.

And every historic effort to forge a democratic project has been undermined by two fundamental realities: poverty and paranoia. The persistence of poverty generates levels of despair that deepen social conflict the escalation of paranoia produces levels of distrust that reinforce cultural division. Rae is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia despair, and distrust. In short, a candid examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American democracy (p. 107).

Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own. Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one. In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis... In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Swans," the banished sister can only disenchant her eleven brothers -- who are swans all day look but turn human at night -- by gathering stinging nettles barehanded from churchyard graves, making them into flax, spinning them and knitting eleven long-sleeved shirts while remaining silent the whole time. If she speaks, they'll remain birds forever. In her silence, she cannot protest the crimes she accused of and nearly burned as a witch. Hauled off to a pyre as she knits the last of the shirts, she is rescued by the swans, who fly in at the last moment. As they swoop down, she throws the nettle shirts over them so that they turn into men again, all but the youngest brother, whose shirt is missing a sleeve so that he's left with one arm and one wing, eternally a swan-man. Why shirts made of graveyard nettles by bleeding fingers and silence should disenchant men turned into birds by their step-mother is a question the story doesn't need to answer. It just needs to give us compelling images of exile, loneliness, affection, and metamorphosis -- and of a heroine who nearly dies of being unable to tell her own story.

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.

Indeed the roots of the climate crisis date back to core civilizational myths on which post-Enlightenment Western culture is founded—myths about humanity’s duty to dominate a natural world that is believed to be at once limitless and entirely controllable.

Governments had socialized the liabilities of the core institutions of the global financial system.

rejection of truth is the real core of our crisis.

The origin of illness may be in the past, but the virulent crisis must be dynamically tackled. I believe in attacking the core of the illness, through its present symptoms, quickly, directly. The past is a labyrinth. One does not have to step into it and move step by step through every turn and twist. The past reveals itself instantly, in today’s fever or abscess of the soul.

Too often, poverty and deprivation get covered as events. That is, when some disaster strikes, when people die. Yet, poverty is about much more than starvation deaths or near famine conditions. It is the sum total of a multiplicity of factors. The weightage of some of these varies from region to region, society to society, culture to culture. But at the core is a fairly compact number of factors. They include not just income and calorie intake. Land, health, education, literacy, infant mortality rates and life expectancy are also some of them. Debt, assets, irrigation, drinking water, sanitation and jobs count too. You can have the mandatory 2,400 or 2,100 calories a day and yet be very poor. India’s problems differ from those of a Somalia or Ethiopia in crisis. Hunger—again just one aspect of poverty—is far more complex here. It is more low level, less visible and does not make for the dramatic television footage that a Somalia and Ethiopia do. That makes covering the process more challenging—and more important. Many who do not starve receive very inadequate nutrition. Children getting less food than they need can look quite normal. Yet poor nutrition can impair both mental and physical growth and they can suffer its debilitating impact all their lives. A person lacking minimal access to health at critical moments can face destruction almost as surely as one in hunger.

A crisis is said to resemble a sharp fruit knife. It removes the peel and exposes the core: the amorphous, largely instinct-governed primordial state in which morality is dominated by self-preservation

I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?

It was at this time that I was reminded of the chain of support that keeps a sufferer afloat—the person at the core of a crisis needs the support of their family and best friends, while those people need support from their friends, partners, and family. Then even those people twice removed might need to talk to someone about it too. It takes a village to mend a broken heart.

In societies of deep poverty, women are pushed to the margins. Women are outsiders. That’s not a coincidence. When any community pushes any group out, especially its women, it’s creating a crisis that can only be reversed by bringing the outsiders back in. That is the core remedy for poverty and almost any social ill—including the excluded, going to the margins of society and bringing everybody back in.

Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else. Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn’t make a leader less effective. Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone’s opportunity. Leadership is not always about getting things done “right.” Leadership is about getting things done through other people. The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault. As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor. A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don’t show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time. To develop a competent team, help the leaders in your organization discover their leadership competencies and delegate accordingly. Once you step outside your zone, don’t attempt to lead. Follow. The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. Accepting the status quo is the equivalent of accepting a death sentence. Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life. So leaders find themselves in the precarious and often career-jeopardizing position of being the one to draw attention to the need for change. Consequently, courage is a nonnegotiable quality for the next generation leader. The leader is the one who has the courage to act on what he sees. A leader is someone who has the courage to say publicly what everybody else is whispering privately. It is not his insight that sets the leader apart from the crowd. It is his courage to act on what he sees, to speak up when everyone else is silent. Next generation leaders are those who would rather challenge what needs to change and pay the price than remain silent and die on the inside. The first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader. And being the first to step out requires courage. In this way, courage establishes leadership. Leadership requires the courage to walk in the dark. The darkness is the uncertainty that always accompanies change. The mystery of whether or not a new enterprise will pan out. The reservation everyone initially feels when a new idea is introduced. The risk of being wrong. Many who lack the courage to forge ahead alone yearn for someone to take the first step, to go first, to show the way. It could be argued that the dark provides the optimal context for leadership. After all, if the pathway to the future were well lit, it would be crowded. Fear has kept many would-be leaders on the sidelines, while good opportunities paraded by. They didn’t lack insight. They lacked courage. Leaders are not always the first to see the need for change, but they are the first to act. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk. You can’t lead without taking risk. You won’t take risk without courage. Courage is essential to leadership.

The final neoliberal fallback is geoengineering, which derives from the core neoliberal doctrine that entrepreneurs, unleashed to exploit acts of creative destruction, will eventually innovate market solutions to address dire economic problems. This is the whiz-bang futuristic science fiction side of neoliberalism, which appeals to male adolescents and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs almost as much as do the novels of Ayn Rand.

The central problems of our day flow from this erosion: social isolation, distrust, polarization, the breakdown of family, the loss of community, tribalism, rising suicide rates, rising mental health problems, a spiritual crisis caused by a loss of common purpose, the loss—in nation after nation—of any sense of common solidarity that binds people across difference, the loss of those common stories and causes that foster community, mutuality, comradeship, and purpose. The core flaw of hyper-individualism is that it leads to a degradation and a pulverization of the human person.

In foreign policy, managing a situation in a manner that fails to address core or what are sometimes described as final status issues can be preferable to attempting to bring about a solution sure to be unacceptable to one or more of the parties and that could as a result provoke a dangerous response. Economics,

We cannot hope to resist the coming soft totalitarianism if we do not have our spiritual lives in order. This is the message of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great anti-communist dissident, Nobel laureate, and Orthodox Christian. He believed the core of the crisis that created and sustained communism was not political but spiritual.

Office Peone looked at John and wondered what mental illness he had. The Seattle streets were filled with the mostly-crazy, half-crazy, nearly crazy, and soon-to-be crazy. Indian, white, Chicano, Asian, men, women, children. The social workers did not have anywhere near enough money, training, or time to help them. The city government hated the crazies because they were a threat to the public image of the urban core. Private citizens ignored them at all times of the year except the few charitable days leading up to and following Christmas. In the end, the police had to do most of the work. Police did crisis counseling, transporting them howling to detox, the dangerous to jail, racing the sick to the hospitals, to a safer place. At the academy, Officer Peone figured he would be fighting bad guys. He did not imagine he would spend most of his time taking care of the refuse of the world. Peone found it easier when the refuse were all nuts or dumb-ass drunks, harder when they were just regular folks struggling to find their way off the streets.

10. Flexible personality 11. Individual core values 12. Freedom from personal constraints

With the growing budget crisis in public education, it’s cheaper for schools to not have to construct and maintain buildings for students. Machines are less expensive than real teachers.

There are moments in each of our lives when something greater—something Incontrovertible—steps in to help us realign with our truest lives and most authentic selves. This perceived crisis or trauma either shakes our world to its core or tears everything apart so that we are launched once again in the direction of our best lives, the most authentic expression of who we are each here to be.

7. Honest national self-appraisal 8. Historical experience of previous national crises 9. Dealing with national failure 10. Situation-specific national flexibility 11. National core values 12. Freedom from geopolitical constraints

The physical threat posed by climate change represents a crisis that is not only material but also profoundly spiritual at its core because it challenges us to think seriously about the future of the human race and what it means to be a human being.

In its simplest form, Mission True organizations know why they exist and protect their core at all costs. They remain faithful to what they believe God has entrusted them to do. They define what is immutable: their values and purposes, their DNA, their heart and soul.

Henry must have it as he liked, for she loved him, and someday she would use her love to make him a better man. Pity was at the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if one may generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman, it brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil. Here was the core of the question. Henry must be forgiven and made better by love. Nothing else mattered.

When any community pushes any group out, especially its women, it’s creating a crisis that can only be reversed by bringing the outsiders back in. This is the core remedy for poverty and almost any social ill—including the excluded, going to the margins of society and bringing everybody back in.

In 1960, of Ohio’s ten million residents, one million were born in Kentucky, West Virginia, or Tennessee. This doesn’t count the large number of migrants from elsewhere in the southern Appalachian Mountains; nor does it include the children or grandchildren of migrants who were hill people to the core. There were undoubtedly many of these children and grandchildren, as hillbillies tended to have much higher birthrates than the native population.6

Climate change demands that we consume less, but being consumers is all we know. Climate change is not a problem that can be solved simply by changing what we buy---a hybrid instead of an SUV, some carbon offsets when we get on a plane. At it's core, it is a crisis born of overconsumption by the comparatively wealthy, which means the world's most manic consumers are going to have to consume less so that others can have enough to life. The problem is not "human nature," as we are so often told. We weren't born having to shop this much, and we have, in our recent past, been just as happy (in many cases happier) consuming significantly less. The problem is the inflated role that consumption has come to play in our particular era. Late capitalism teaches us to create ourselves through our consumer choices: shopping is how we form our identities, find community, and express ourselves. Thus, telling people they can't shop as much as they want to because the planet's support systems are overburdened can be understood as a personal attack, asking to telling them they cannot truly be themselves. This is likely why, of environmentalism's original "three Rs" (reduce, reuse, recycle), only the third one has ever gotten any traction, since it allows us to keep on shopping as long as we put the refuse in the right box. The other two, which require that we consume less, were pretty much dead on arrival.

1. Acknowledgment that one is in crisis 2. Acceptance of one’s personal responsibility to do something 3. Building a fence, to delineate one’s individual problems needing to be solved 4. Getting material and emotional help from other individuals and groups 5. Using other individuals as models of how to solve problems 6. Ego strength 7. Honest self-appraisal 8. Experience of previous personal crises 9. Patience 10. Flexible personality 11. Individual core values 12. Freedom from personal constraints

Republican strategist Peter Wehner says, “Trumpism is not a political philosophy; it is a purposeful effort, led by a demagogue, to incite ugly passions, stoke resentments and divisions, and create fear of those who are not like ‘us’—Mexicans, Muslims, and Syrian refugees. But it will not end there. There will always be fresh targets.” Conservative evangelical Wehner contrasts that with the principles of Jesus, saying, “[A] carpenter from Nazareth offered a very different philosophy. When you see a wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, Jesus taught, you should not pass him by. ‘Truly I say to you,’ he said in Matthew, ‘to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.’ . . . At its core, Christianity teaches that everyone, no matter at what station or in what season in life, has inherent dignity and worth.”15 Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and top policy adviser to George W. Bush, and an originator of “compassionate conservatism,” says, [O]ur faith involves a common belief with unavoidably public consequences: Christians are to love their neighbor, and everyone is their neighbor. All the appearances of difference—in race, ethnicity, nationality and accomplishment

Which brings us back to where we started: climate change and bad timing. It must always be remembered that the greatest barrier to humanity rising to meet the climate crisis is not that it is too late or that we don’t know what to do. There is just enough time, and we are swamped with green tech and green plans. And yet the reason so many of us are inclined to answer Brad Werner’s provocative question in the affirmative is that we are afraid—with good reason—that our political class is wholly incapable of seizing those tools and implementing those plans, since doing so involves unlearning the core tenets of the stifling free-market ideology that governed every stage of their rise to power.

The deference that politicians, police, and prosecutors showed the Catholic Church (to which most of them belonged) mirrored a deference shown in the wider society. But the extent of the sexual abuse that spilled out after the Geoghan case, especially the Church’s efforts to buy the silence of the victims, shook to the core even the most devout Catholics in law enforcement and politics. A culture of deference that had taken more than a century to evolve seemed to erode in a matter of weeks. In other parts of the United States, there was a similar change in the way secular power viewed Church authorities. On Long Island, in Cincinnati, and in Philadelphia, district attorneys convened grand juries to investigate the role Church officials may have played in the scandal. Many

consumed books about social policy and the working poor. One book in particular, a study by eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson called The Truly Disadvantaged, struck a nerve. I was sixteen the first time I read it, and though I didn’t fully understand it all, I grasped the core thesis. As millions migrated north to factory jobs, the communities that sprouted up around those factories were vibrant but fragile: When the factories shut their doors, the people left behind were trapped in towns and cities that could no longer support such large populations with high-quality work. Those who could—generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected—left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the “truly disadvantaged”—unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support.

I consumed books about social policy and the working poor. One book in particular, a study by eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson called The Truly Disadvantaged, struck a nerve. I was sixteen the first time I read it, and though I didn’t fully understand it all, I grasped the core thesis. As millions migrated north to factory jobs, the communities that sprouted up around those factories were vibrant but fragile: When the factories shut their doors, the people left behind were trapped in towns and cities that could no longer support such large populations with high-quality work. Those who could—generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected—left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the “truly disadvantaged”—unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support. Wilson’s

As a culture, we had no heroes. Certainly not any politician--Barack Obama was then the most admired man in America (and likely still is), but even when the country was enraptured by his rise, most Middletonians viewed him suspiciously. George W. Bush had few fans in 2008. Many loved Bill Clinton, but many more saw him as the symbol of American moral decay, and Ronald Reagan was long dead. We loved the military but had no George S. Patton figure in the modern army. I doubt my neighbors could even name a high-ranking military officer. The space program, long a source of pride, had gone the way of the dodo, and with it the celebrity astronauts. Nothing united us with the core fabric of American society. We felt trapped in unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American dream--a steady wage.

As a culture, we had no heroes. Certainly not any politician—Barack Obama was then the most admired man in America (and likely still is), but even when the country was enraptured by his rise, most Middletonians viewed him suspiciously. George W. Bush had few fans in 2008. Many loved Bill Clinton, but many more saw him as the symbol of American moral decay, and Ronald Reagan was long dead. We loved the military but had no George S. Patton figure in the modern army. I doubt my neighbors could even name a high-ranking military officer. The space program, long a source of pride, had gone the way of the dodo, and with it the celebrity astronauts. Nothing united us with the core fabric of American society. We felt trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream—a steady wage.

Salutogenesis.” When his statement was returned with blank stares, the psychologist smiled and repeated, “Salutogenesis. The theory that some of us have it in our DNA to bring out a dormant . . . superman, for lack of a better term, when we are pushed to our physical or emotional limits. The theory was forwarded after studies of certain Holocaust survivors showed that a surprising number of them had not only made it through the worst mental and spiritual trial imaginable, they’d achieved a level of emotional and psychological growth that, frankly, shouldn’t have occurred.” Deb frowned. “We’re part of a study on ‘the tough get tougher’?” “No. It’s not a platitude. It’s the belief that salutogenesis is a core human trait that actually manifests and grows only under extreme physical and emotional duress. It’s not just survival in the midst of a crisis, it’s the ability to transform under it, to bloom and become something better than you were before the crisis took place.

All along, I had thought that the attachment, or midlife crisis, or dark night of the soul, or whatever my experience had been, was a terrible stumbling block, a sign of shameful weakness, evidence of some core, incurable insanity: in short, The Problem. Now I knew that, in some very difficult, mysterious way, it had actually been The Solution. My struggle went way beyond any relationship with, or way of seeing, a mere human being. All along, I had thought my error lay in failing to find the formula to love correctly, unselfishly, when the very idea of trying to be perfect myself, with respect to human relationships-or any other way- was the real problem. Forget trying to achieve your own holiness, Therese seemed to be saying: you are infinitely too feeble, weak, and misguided to accomplish anything on your own. You're like a bleating lamb, wandering blindly around with your divided, wayward heart... Sit down on the floor, like a baby, and Christ will bend down and lift you up.

Probing Wolf’s construction of rape crisis feminism as victim feminism also shows that Wolf ignores an important aspect of victim identity that rape crisis feminists acknowledge centrally. Namely, the much-examined tendency of victims of rape to engage in self-blame and ‘experience only self-directed anger’ (Alcoff and Gray, 1993, p. 284). Wolf espouses a version of survivorship called power feminism, without carrying through rape crisis feminism’s cautions about forms of agency that centrally involve self-blame. A core argument of Wolf is that victims are peculiarly at risk of failing to assume personal responsibility – this is what is so disabling about victim identity. Rape crisis feminists put the problem very differently: victims often assume excessive responsibility, for their own actions and for the actions of others. In fact, for rape crisis feminists, ‘victim identity’ primarily consists of this self-blaming consciousness. ... Rather than seek the ‘rewards’ of victim recognition, the self-blaming victim situates themselves as the agent of their own victimization.

I consumed books about social policy and the working poor. One book in particular, a study by eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson called The Truly Disadvantaged, struck a nerve. I was sixteen the first time I read it, and though I didn’t fully understand it all, I grasped the core thesis. As millions migrated north to factory jobs, the communities that sprouted up around those factories were vibrant but fragile: When the factories shut their doors, the people left behind were trapped in towns and cities that could no longer support such large populations with high-quality work. Those who could—generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected—left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the “truly disadvantaged”—unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support. Wilson’s book spoke to me. I wanted to write him a letter and tell him that he had described my home perfectly. That it resonated so personally is odd, however, because he wasn’t writing about the hillbilly transplants from Appalachia—he was writing about black people in the inner cities.

Can fascism still exist? Clearly Stage One movements can still be found in all major democracies. More crucially, can they reach Stage Two again by becoming rooted and influential? We need not look for exact replicas, in which fascist veterans dust off their swastikas. Collectors of Nazi paraphernalia and hard-core neo-Nazi sects are capable of provoking destructive violence and polarization. As long as they remain excluded from the alliances with the establishment necessary to join the political mainstream or share power, however, they remain more a law and order problem than a political threat. Much more likely to exert an influence are extreme Right movements that have learned to moderate their language, abandon classical fascist symbolism, and appear “normal.” It is by understanding how past fascisms worked, and not by checking the color of shirts, or seeking echoes of the rhetoric of the national-syndicalist dissidents of the opening of the twentieth century, that we may be able to recognize it. The well-known warning signals—extreme nationalist propaganda and hate crimes—are important but insufficient. Knowing what we do about the fascist cycle, we can find more ominous warning signals in situations of political deadlock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for tougher allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery. Fascists are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their “mobilizing passions,” and try to co-opt the fascist following. Armed by historical knowledge, we may be able to distinguish today’s ugly but isolated imitations, with their shaved heads and swastika tattoos, from authentic functional equivalents in the form of a mature fascist conservative alliance. Forewarned, we may be able to detect the real thing when it comes along.

Ultimately then, as one gets ready for kundalini awakening, the goal is to help those chakras clear, open, and align. Kundalini will respond with the greatest ease of motion accomplished and will demonstrate how well it knows what to do. As you begin to work through these chakras blockages or energetic reversals, you may find that those struggles look something like this. Blockages for the root chakra may look like low energy, general fear, persistent exhaustion, identity crisis, feeling isolated from the environment, eating disorders, general lack or erratic appetite, blatant materialism, difficulty saving money, or overall constant health problems. For the sacral chakra, blockages or reversals may look like lack of creativity, lack of inspiration, low or no motivation, low or no sexual appetite, feelings of insignificance, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unaccepted, feelings of being outcasted, inability to care for oneself or persistent and recurrent problems of relationship with one's intimate partners. Blockages may look like identity crises or deficits for the solar plexus chakra, low self-esteem, low or no self-esteem, digestive problems, food intolerance, poor motivation, persistent weakness, constant nausea, anxiety disorders, liver disorder or disease, repeated illnesses, loss of core strength, lack of overall energy, recurrent depression with little relief, feelings of betrayal, For the chakra of the heart, reversals and blockages may seem like the inability to love oneself or others, the inability to put others first, the inability to put oneself first, the inability to overcome a problem ex, constant grudges, confidence issues, social anxiety or intense shyness, the failure to express emotions in a healthy way, problems of commitment, constant procrastination, intense anxiety For the throat chakra, blockages might seem like oversharing, inability to speak truthfully, failure to communicate with others, severe laryngitis, sore throats, respiratory or airway constraints, asthma, anemia, excessive exhaustion, inability to find the right words, paralyzing fear of confusion, nervousness in public situations, sometimes extreme dizziness, physical submissiveness, verba. For the third eye chakra, blockages or reversals might seem like a lack of direction in life, increasingly intense feelings of boredom or stagnation, migraines, insomnia, eye or vision problems, depression, high blood pressure, inability to remember one's dreams, constant and jarring flashbacks, closed-mindedness, fear, history of mental disorders, and history of addiction. For the crown chakra, blockages may look like feelings of envy, extreme sadness, need for superiority over others, self-destructive behaviors, history of addiction, generally harmful habits, dissociations from the physical plane, inability to make even the easiest decisions, persistent exhaustion, terrible migraines, hair loss, anemia, cerebral confusion, poor mental control, lack of intellect.

Now, with all seven of these chakras revolving in the right direction with no blockages whatsoever, your kundalini would not be able to help itself from rising into that state of bliss, which it perceives above. Ultimately then, as one gets ready for kundalini awakening, the goal is to help those chakras clear, open, and align. Kundalini will respond with the greatest ease of motion accomplished and will demonstrate how well it knows what to do. As you begin to work through these chakras blockages or energetic reversals, you may find that those struggles look something like this. Blockages for the root chakra may look like low energy, general fear, persistent exhaustion, identity crisis, feeling isolated from the environment, eating disorders, general lack or erratic appetite, blatant materialism, difficulty saving money, or overall constant health problems. For the sacral chakra, blockages or reversals may look like lack of creativity, lack of inspiration, low or no motivation, low or no sexual appetite, feelings of insignificance, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unaccepted, feelings of being outcasted, inability to care for oneself or persistent and recurrent problems of relationship with one's intimate partners. Blockages may look like identity crises or deficits for the solar plexus chakra, low self-esteem, low or no self-esteem, digestive problems, food intolerance, poor motivation, persistent weakness, constant nausea, anxiety disorders, liver disorder or disease, repeated illnesses, loss of core strength, lack of overall energy, recurrent depression with little relief, feelings of betrayal, For the chakra of the heart, reversals and blockages may seem like the inability to love oneself or others, the inability to put others first, the inability to put oneself first, the inability to overcome a problem ex, constant grudges, confidence issues, social anxiety or intense shyness, the failure to express emotions in a healthy way, problems of commitment, constant procrastination, intense anxiety For the throat chakra, blockages might seem like oversharing, inability to speak truthfully, failure to communicate with others, severe laryngitis, sore throats, respiratory or airway constraints, asthma, anemia, excessive exhaustion, inability to find the right words, paralyzing fear of confusion, nervousness in public situations, sometimes extreme dizziness, physical submissiveness, verba. For the third eye chakra, blockages or reversals might seem like a lack of direction in life, increasingly intense feelings of boredom or stagnation, migraines, insomnia, eye or vision problems, depression, high blood pressure, inability to remember one's dreams, constant and jarring flashbacks, closed-mindedness, fear, history of mental disorders, and history of addiction. For the crown chakra, blockages may look like feelings of envy, extreme sadness, need for superiority over others, self-destructive behaviors, history of addiction, generally harmful habits, dissociations from the physical plane, inability to make even the easiest decisions, persistent exhaustion, terrible migraines, hair loss, anemia, cerebral confusion, poor mental control, lack of intellect.

The protest has won the backing of prominent economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University academic, and Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England. Its supporters believe that the exposure to a wider range of approaches is necessary if the next generation of policy makers is to avoid the mistakes made in the run-up to the crisis. Faculties in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Budapest, Sydney and Bangalore will aim to address these complaints this academic year by road-testing a new syllabus from the CORE project, led by Wendy Carlin, a professor at University College London. The Institute for New Economic Thinking, a research group bankrolled by billionaire George Soros, has spent around $300,000 on the programme so far.

(Economist Robert Higgs wrote a book about this phenomenon titled Crisis and Leviathan, in which he argues that government intervention inevitably creates future problems, which results in the government’s intervening even more in an attempt to correct them.)

When I asked one of Europe’s most influential economic policy makers recently whether the euro crisis really is over, he replied: “No, it’s just moving from the periphery to the core.” The argument is that while worries about Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Spain have become less acute, concerns about Italy and even France should actually be rising. The statistics for Italy, in particular, are shocking. Since the onset of the crisis in 2008, Italy has lost 25 per cent of its industrial capacity and the real level of unemployment is now, according to senior Italian officials, about 15 per cent. Italy’s scope for economic stimulus is limited by EU rules and by the fact that the country’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product is now more than 130 per cent. France’s economic statistics are less bleak but unemployment is still in double digits and the national debt is creeping up to the symbolic level of 100 per cent of GDP.

Raising capital. Organisations like Rio Tinto, TomTom and GKN have all raised significant sums through the equity markets. Refinancing debt. Some companies, like Yell and Schaeffler, have rolled over billions in bank finance. However, many businesses are still finding banks reluctant to lend and have turned to bond issuance as an alternative. Divestment. Companies can sell off valuable assets, such as Barclays did with Barclays Global Investors, and it is always better to do so before a crisis; otherwise it will be seen for the fire sale it is and the price will be a fire-sale price. Furthermore, any sell-off that weakens a firm’s core capability or its long-term competitive position may also shorten its life. Cut costs but not capability The managing uncertainty survey revealed that the most common action that companies took when the financial crisis struck was to cut costs. Some 82% of respondents cut costs. When asked about their future responses to uncertainty, 76% indicated they would continue to focus on cost reduction.

But before we look at what is wrong and address it, we need to understand something. The core problem isn’t the fact that we’re lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God. We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way. We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He’s great and deserves to be the center of our lives. Jesus came humbly as a servant, but He never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves. He commands everything from His followers.

Consolidation will not get at the core problems our cities face. If we want to build resilience and find solutions to our problems, we need to embrace the chaos — the innovation along with the failure — of natural systems, and create a framework where local governments can experiment with different responses to the current crisis.

It must always be remembered that the greatest barrier to humanity rising to meet the climate crisis is not that it is too late or that we don’t know what to do. There is just enough time, and we are swamped with green tech and green plans. And yet the reason so many of us are inclined to answer Brad Werner’s provocative question in the affirmative is that we are afraid—with good reason—that our political class is wholly incapable of seizing those tools and implementing those plans, since doing so involves unlearning the core tenets of the stifling free-market ideology that governed every stage of their rise to power.

The core problem isn’t the fact that we’re lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God. We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way. We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He’s great and deserves to be the center of our lives. Jesus came humbly as a servant, but He never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves. He commands everything from His followers.

Differences in national economic structures, values, cultures, institutions, and histories contribute profoundly to competitive success. . .While globalization of competition might appear to make the nation less important, instead it seems to make it more so. With fewer impediments to trade to shelter uncompetitive domestic firms and industries, the home nation takes on growing significance because it is the source of the skills and technology that underpin competitive advantage. . .The home base [for successful global competitors] is the nation in which the essential competitive advantages of the enterprise are created and sustained. It is where a firm’s strategy is set and the core product and process technology (broadly defined) are created and maintained. (Porter 1990: 19)

As Americans were debating bailouts, individual mandates, and Michelle Obama’s finely toned arms, progressives knew they had a golden opportunity to sneak Common Core through the back door. And that’s just what they did. Remember what Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Common Core was that political philosophy in action. The controllists’ plan was almost perfect. They knew they didn’t have to sell Common Core to lawmakers in individual state legislatures, where citizens would find out about it and demand it be stopped. Instead, they could just go to the individual state boards of education—entities that most Americans don’t even know exist—for permission. In Wisconsin, for example, all it took was one individual, the state superintendent of public instruction, to adopt the standards. It was a devious and brilliant plan, but that didn’t make it foolproof. It wasn’t a given that state school board members would agree to Common Core. Some might sense that it was a ploy to slowly nationalize their state’s education system. To counter that possibility, progressives wrote special funding for the Common Core “initiative” into President Obama’s nearly $800 billion stimulus plan via the “Race to the Top” program. This gave the administration the ability to bribe cash-starved states into adopting Common Core by making it a prerequisite for states to compete for seven-figure education grants. In addition, they delayed the testing component of the standards for several years, thereby giving state bureaucrats several years of zero accountability. Many of these bureaucrats no doubt knew they’d be retired or in a different position by the time the real pain came around.

Focus goals on your capabilities, not material wealth. You live in a consumer society geared to create an ever-present need to consume and accumulate more. Gauging yourself by the possessions of others will never leave you satisfied. There is always something new to buy. Our culture comes with designated advertising breaks to make sure to poke at you that you need more stuff. At its core, advertising is telling you to be unsatisfied with everything except the very thing they are selling you. Material wealth can be taken away at any moment. A rich man and a useful man can both be made bankrupt, but who will be drafted first in a moment of crisis when all the money is gone? The useful man.

At its core, advertising is a marketplace for attention. When your eyes breeze over an advertisement as you scroll through your news feeds or read an article, a transaction has occurred. Your attention has been sold by the platform and bought by the advertiser.

After turning their backs on working-class issues, traditionally one of the core concerns of left parties, Democrats stood by while right-wing demagoguery took root and thrived. Then, after the people absorbed a fifty-year blizzard of fake populist propaganda, Democrats turned against the idea of “the people” altogether.17 America was founded with the phrase “We the People,” but William Galston, co-inventor of the concept of the Learning Class, urges us to get over our obsession with popular sovereignty. As he writes in Anti-Pluralism, his 2018 attack on populism, “We should set aside this narrow and complacent conviction; there are viable alternatives to the people as sources of legitimacy.”18 There certainly are. In the pages of this book, we have seen anti-populists explain that they deserve to rule because they are better educated, or wealthier, or more rational, or harder working. The contemporary culture of constant moral scolding is in perfect accordance with this way of thinking; it is a new iteration of the old elitist fantasy. The liberal establishment I am describing in this chapter is anti-populist not merely because it dislikes Donald Trump—who is in no way a genuine populist—but because it is populism’s opposite in nearly every particular. Its political ambition for the people is not to bring them together in a reform movement but to scold them, to shame them, and to teach them to defer to their superiors. It doesn’t seek to punish Wall Street or Silicon Valley; indeed, the same bunch that now rebukes and cancels and blacklists could not find a way to punish elite bankers after the global financial crisis back in 2009. This liberalism desires to merge with these institutions of private privilege, to enlist their power for what it imagines to be “good.

We need to feel like the person who wants to do the right thing. Moral licensing turns out to be, at its core, an identity crisis. We only reward ourselves for good behavior if we believe that who we really are is the self that wants to be bad. From this point of view, every act of self-control is a punishment, and only self-indulgence is a reward.

We need to embrace the truth of the One Idea. We are all brothers and sisters. That is always worthy of respect at the deepest core of our humanity. Holding onto that truth is where integrity lives.

Turbulence during a relationship does not mean its core, foundation and essence changes. Couples will run into obstacles. The challenge may knock the wind out of them, but it does not have to cripple their resolve. Both people must trust that on the other side of crisis still exist the qualities you appreciate.

By the beginning of 1946, there were plenty of indications that Stalin was not going to cooperate with the Anglo-Americans, however, and not just with regard to Germany. Russia was refusing, for instance, to carry out its part of the post-war agreement when it came to Iran. The country had been occupied by British, American and Russian troops during the war years, with an agreement that all would withdraw as soon as peace came. The British and American forces duly complied within the time agreed, but the Soviets did not, and, moreover, showed signs of trying to expand their area of occupation. Two ethnically based ‘soviet republics’ were set up by Soviet agents on Iranian territory during early 1946. These were liquidated by the Iranian army, with American encouragement, and their leaders either executed or put to flight, but the crisis atmosphere lingered on for months before Stalin quietly withdrew. The Iran crisis was a key factor in the deteriorating relationship between the Anglo-American axis and its former Soviet allies. While it was still simmering, President Truman reinforced his case by sending the US battleship Missouri to the Mediterranean. The Missouri came to form the core of the Sixth Fleet, which is still there.2 At

As historian Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) noted, civilizations rarely die simply from external assault; they are first hollowed out by internal moral decline. “Civilizations,” Toynbee wrote, “die from suicide, not by murder.”1 They are weakened from the inside out, like an old tree rotted to the core and knocked

person who wants to do the right thing. Moral licensing turns out to be, at its core, an identity crisis. We only reward ourselves for good behaviour if we believe that who we really are is the self that wants to be bad. From this point of view, every act of self-control is a punishment, and only self-indulgence is a reward. Moving beyond moral licensing requires knowing that who we are is the self that wants the best for us – and the self that wants to live in line with our core values. When this happens, we will no longer view the impulsive, lazy or easily tempted self as the “real” us. We will no longer act like someone who must be bribed, tricked or forced to pursue our goals, and then rewarded for making any effort at all.

For me, a real breakthrough occurred when I stopped thinking about and defining meat in terms of its animal origin (e.g., chicken, cow, pig), but instead in terms of its composition. At a very high level, meat is really five things: amino acids, lipids, small amounts of carbohydrates, trace minerals, and, of course, water. The animal eats plants and turns them into muscle tissue, or what we call meat. But with today’s technology, instead of using a biological bioreactor (animal), we can harvest those core inputs directly from plants themselves. We can use other systems to assemble them in the familiar architecture of meat.

At the core of this pattern is a continual back-and-forth rhythm that comes from emerging generations reacting against the imbalances and mistakes of the previous generation. If we go back four generations in our own time we can clearly see this. We start with the silent generation. As children experiencing the Great Depression and as adults coming of age during World War II and the postwar period, they became rather cautious and conservative, valuing stability, material comforts, and fitting tightly into the group. The next generation, the baby boomers, found the conformity of their parents rather stifling. Emerging in the 1960s, and not haunted by the harsh financial realities of their parents, this generation valued personal expression, having adventures, and being idealistic. This was followed by Generation X, which was marked by the chaos of the 1960s and the ensuing social and political scandals. Coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, it was pragmatic and confrontational, valuing individualism and self-reliance. This generation reacted against the hypocrisies and impracticalities in their parents’ idealism. This was followed by the millennial generation. Traumatized by terrorism and a financial crisis, they reacted against the individualism of the last generation, craving security and teamwork, with a noted dislike of conflict and confrontation.

Societies in acute distress often form what anthropologists call “crisis cults,” which promise recovered grandeur and empowerment during times of collapse, anxiety, and disempowerment. A mythologized past will magically return. America will be great again. The old social hierarchies, opportunities, and rules will be resurrected. Prescribed rituals and behaviors, including acts of violence to cleanse the society of evil, will vanquish the malevolent forces that are blamed for the crisis. These crisis cults—they have arisen in most societies that faced destruction, from Easter Island to Native Americans at the time of the 1890 Ghost Dance—create hermetically sealed tribes informed by magical thinking. We are already far down this road. Our ruling elites are little more than Ice Age hunters in Brooks Brothers suits, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright told me, driving herds of woolly mammoths over cliffs to keep the party going without asking what will happen when the food source suddenly goes extinct. “The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge,” the philosopher John Gray wrote. “The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge—not even in the long run.

Alertness, equanimity, decisiveness, and compassion are the four core leadership qualities in crisis that come when the 114 chakras are in balance.

Industries become ripe for disruption when existing players fail to adopt technological change to improve quality and value, as it may threaten their core business.

1. Data show the CO2 level rose to 410 ppm by 2020, an increase of 130 ppm. 2. The IPCC assumes its core theory is true, which forces the conclusion that human CO2 caused all the increase above 280 ppm. 3. IPCC agrees that human CO2 emissions are less than 5 percent of natural CO2 emissions. 4. How can less that 5 percent of all CO2 emissions cause 32 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere? Answer: It can’t. 8.2 Multiple lines of evidence prove IPCC’s core theory is wrong. 1. Ice core data prove natural CO2 caused the CO2 increase. 2. Direct CO2 data prove CO2 was much higher than 280 ppm before 1750. 3. Leaf stomata data prove CO2 was much higher than 280 ppm before 1750. 4. Statistics prove human CO2 is not the primary cause of the increase in CO2. 5. IPCC’s human carbon cycle is not consistent with its own natural carbon cycle. This is a basic physics error. 6. Inspection shows IPCC’s human carbon cycle is based on IPCC’s invalid assumption that its core theory is true. 8.3 A simple physics carbon cycle model replicates IPCC’s data for its natural carbon cycle. 1. This model easily calculates the true human carbon cycle that is compatible with IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. 2. The true human carbon cycle shows human CO2 has

It’s no wonder that we react so nonchalantly to the ever-mounting statistics about the crisis of mass extinction. We have a habit of taking this information with surprising calm. We don’t weep. We don’t get worked up. Why? Because we see humans as fundamentally separate from the rest of the living community. Those species are out there, in the environment. They aren’t in here; they aren’t part of us.47 It is not surprising that we behave this way. After all, this is the core principle of capitalism: that the world is not really alive, and it is certainly not our kin, but rather just stuff to be extracted and discarded – and that includes most of the human beings living here too. From its very first principles, capitalism has set itself at war against life itself.

The financial crisis and subsequent political instability left them broadly convinced of the need for a social philosophy that transcended the abstract dictates of laissez-faire: they agreed that if capitalism was going to be saved from the pressures that were continuously eroding its foundations, its core assumptions would need to be rebuilt. But they disagreed sharply and continuously when the conversation turned to identifying those aspects of the capitalist order that were sacred and those that could be revised, or those morals that might be coded as absolute and the mechanisms of enforcement that would make them so.

I am one of seven women—three of us white—in the office of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality); at a joint meeting with SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commit- tee). More than twenty men, black and white, are present, run- ning the meeting. Three civil-rights workers—one black man and two white men—have disappeared in Mississippi, and the groups have met over this crisis. (The lynched bodies of the three men—James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—are later found, tortured to death.) Meanwhile, the FBI, local police, and the National Guard have been dredging lakes and rivers in search of the bodies. During the search, the mutilated parts of an estimated seventeen different human bodies are found. All of us in the New York office are in a state of shock. As word filters in about the. difficulty of identifying mutilated bodies long decomposed, we also learn that all but one of the unidentified bodies are female. A male CORE leader mutters, in a state of fury, ““There’s been a whole goddamned lynching we never even knew about. There’s been some brother disappeared who never even got reported.” My brain goes spinning. Have I heard correctly? Did he mean what I think he meant? If so, is it my racism showing itself in that I am appalled? Finally, I hazard a tentative question. Why one lynching? What about the sixteen unidentified female bodies? What about - Absolute silence. The men in the room, black and white, stare at me. The women in the room, black and white, stare at the floor. Then the answer comes, in a tone of impatience, as if I were politically retarded. "Those were obviously sex murders. Those weren't political." I fall silent.

Even if Zen is not currently undergoing the same kind of core doctrinal crisis as Christianity is for some, we should pay attention to suspicious critiques as well as to sympathetic interpretations of the Zen tradition.

Humility is at the core of the religion.

Ali Shariati and others, who subscribed to the traditional leftist belief that capitalism was, at its core, the systematic exploitation of the weak

I was reminded of the chain of support that keeps a sufferer afloat the person at the core of a crisis needs the support of their family and best friends while those people need support from their friends, partners, and family.

was at this time that I was reminded of the chain of support that keeps a sufferer afloat—the person at the core of a crisis needs the support of their family and best friends, while those people need support from their friends, partners, and family. Then even those people twice removed might need to talk to someone about it too. It takes a village to mend a broken heart.

Your mindset is fundamental to who you are: it’s what you know deep down to your core and why you do what you do. Like an operating system, it runs in the background and guides your decisions, interactions, and how you interface with the world around you.

Nonetheless, beyond selling military services or entering into opportunistic alliances, the principalities were basically passive participants in European events, subject to constant impositions and abuses by the invading Powers. This period of history up to the beginning of the 19th century left a deep impression on the memory of the German peoples and explains some of the core fears that survived later in their collective consciousness, particularly the fear of being fenced in and territorially suffocated, or the threat of coalitions among their neighbours.

This goes for any type of positive change, including how we try to motivate ourselves. We need to feel like the kind of person who wants to do the right thing. Moral licensing turns out to be, at its core, an identity crisis. We only reward ourselves for good behavior if we believe that who we really are is the self that wants to be bad. From this point of view, every act of self-control is a punishment, and only self-indulgence if a reward. But why must we see ourselves this way? Moving beyond the traps of moral licensing requires knowing that who we are is the self that wants the best for us—and the self that wants to live in line with our core values. When this happens, we no longer view the impulsive, lazy, or easily tempted self as the "real" us. We will no longer act like someone who must be bribed, tricked, or forced to pursue our goals, and then rewarded for making any effort at all.

the threat today is not western religions, but psychology and consumerism. is the Dharma becoming another psychotherapy, another commodity to be bought and sold? will western Buddhism become all too compatible with our individualistic consumption patterns, with expensive retreats and initiations, catering to overstressed converts, eager to pursue their own enlightenment? let’s hope not, because Buddhism and the west need each other. despite its economic and technologic dynamism, western civilisation and its globalisation are in trouble, which means all of us are in trouble. the most obvious example is our inability to respond to accelerating climate change, as seriously as it requires. if humanity is to survive and thrive over the next few centuries, there is no need to go on at length here about the other social and ecological crisis that confront us now, which are increasingly difficult to ignore [many of those are considered in the following chapters]. it’s also becoming harder to overlook the fact that the political and economic systems we’re so proud of seem unable to address these problems. one must ask, is that because they themselves are the problem? part of the problem is leadership, or the lack of it, but we can’t simply blame our rulers. it’s not only the lack of a moral core of those who rise to the top, or the institutional defamations that massage their rise, economical and political elites, and there’s not much difference between them anymore. like the rest of us, they are in need of a new vision of possibility, what it means to be human, why we tend to get into trouble, and how we can get out go it, those who benefit the most from the present social arrangements may think of themselves as hardheaded realists, but as self-conscious human beings, we remain motivated by some such vision, weather we’re aware of it or not, as why we love war, points out. even secular modernity is based on a spiritual worldview, unfortunately a deficient one, from a Buddhist perspective.

I focused on staying positive every day, despite the money issues, health challenges, and constant reminders of the fire. It took every bit of focus I possessed. Six months after the fire, in the middle of the financial crisis, after one morning’s meditation, I wrote these words in my journal: I woke up this morning feeling like I’m being cradled in the arms of God. The energy of Spirit fills every part of me with blessing. The universe radiates perfection all around me. I am cradled in this field of blessing. It holds us always in love and joy. It nudges us daily to experience the light and beauty at the core of our being. I realize that I’m 100% spiritually successful. I enjoy a life of attunement to the universe. Daily, I celebrate oneness between my human consciousness and the greater consciousness of which I am a part. That’s the ultimate goal of every life, and I’ve lived it from the beginning. I choose to remind myself of this when I’m mesmerized by the things that haven’t materialized in my material world after so many years of visioning and hard work. As I tune in to the universe’s energy, I feel mine change in response. My thoughts become ordered and inspired. I start the day feeling optimistic, positive, enthusiastic, and creative. I embody prosperity. I attune daily to the energy of prosperity, as I have been doing for so many years. I know that material reality arranges itself around the signal that my consciousness produces. The truth is that I am abundant in every possible way, including money. I choose to maintain the joy of that vibration. I celebrate every manifestation of success in my world, no matter how small. I am grateful for my life just the way it is. I remain positive no matter what. I have the most important thing attainable in any life: Oneness with the universe! I attune to its music every morning in meditation. My mind, cells, and energy field come into resonance with its song. I then move into my day inspired and aligned. What a wonderful life. After writing those words, I decided to bask in the experience. I lay down in bed and visualized the experience turning from a delicious but intangible feeling into a hardwired neural fact in my body.

CONTINUE TO WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO COME TO YOU. THESE GROUPS FORMING AROUND THE WORLD ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE PREPARED TO LEARN. CONSIDER THEM THE CORE. THEN YOU WILL HAVE THOSE WHO WILL SEEK YOU OUT, WHO ARE STILL IN FEAR. ONCE THEY ARE OVER THE FEAR, THEN THEY WILL BE READY FOR THE CORE GROUP. MOST IMPORTANT IS THE CONDITION OF YOUR PLANET. THE FIRST STEP IN SOLVING THIS SERIOUS PROBLEM IS AMNESTY.

In genocides rape is most times weaponized by the aggressive side, and the suffering sides to such wickedness are women, old and young. Such actions tear at my core and reveal mankind’s depravity at its worst.

The idea of an American “honest broker” in the Middle East has been a joke for decades. Only a real debate over U.S. policy can change that. That debate cannot happen if liberals refuse to critically examine every aspect of U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine to determine whether it is in step with their core political values. No longer can any position be “taken for granted,” nor can any solution be viewed as a non-starter. Rather, we must be willing to critically interrogate our entire approach to the current crisis. We must be willing to embrace, or at least consider, any solution that will yield freedom, justice, safety, and self-determination for everyone. This has been a demand placed on Palestinians and their supporters for a very long time, requiring them to justify the fight for their rights against accusations of bias against Israel and even against Jews in general. In a conflict as fraught with passion and zealotry as this one is, this sort of critical approach must be demanded equally of all sides and key players involved.

You want to be the type of crisis leader people can count on. That means you need to make showing up - the right way - one of your core principles.

Any system that permits its children to be killed with impunity would seem to be a system in dire crisis. Something at the very core of our system—and society—is irrevocably broken and must be fixed.

What is even more shocking, among the largest receivers of CAP subsidies are some of the most prestigious aristocratic families of Britain, as well as the present owners of the large collective farms privatized after the fall of East Germany’s communist regime. According to a study by professor Richard Baldwin of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (reported by the International Herald Tribune (Castle 2007) in the 2003–2004 farming year, the Queen of England and Prince Charles received 360,000 euros in EU farm subsidies, the Duke of Westminster 260,000 euros, and the Duke of Marlborough 300,000 euros. Incidentally, the capture by powerful national interests of what was supposed to be the core of a ‘welfare state for farmers’ exemplifies the kind of problems that a European welfare state – advocated by some to correct the alleged neo-liberal bias of the EU – would have to face.

The natural human instinct in a financial crisis, and especially the political instinct, is to avoid unpopular interventions, to let the market work its will, to show the world you’re punishing the perpetrators. But letting the fire burn out of control is much more economically damaging, and ultimately more politically damaging, than taking the decisive actions necessary to prevent it from spreading beyond the weakest institutions into the core of the system.

Of course, there was also the bureaucratic B.S. that pervades every organization. Different leaders reacted differently to stress. Some comported themselves well and put the mission first while others allowed stress to impact their decision-making. I use the word “allowed” because that’s just what it is: a choice to open oneself to external influences because the core self lacks the self-awareness to slap adversity in the face and say, “Get outta here. I got this.” Most of our actions at the operator level relied upon the decisions made by senior leaders, and if the decision-making process stalemated for any reason, then momentum lagged across the whole organization—as did results. When this happened—when there was an impetus for action but a lack of contextual awareness—there was only one thing us operators could do: we needed to adapt. We needed to make use of the minimal guidance we had because the problem set (i.e. the threat or crisis) wasn’t going to go away, and the only way to solve it was to fill the gap.

We must judge our idealistic self in the harsh daylight of our concrete deeds. It is the fragments from unanticipated moments in life – suffering, sadness, and fearfulness – when quixotically strung together that ultimately divulge us. Unexpected encounters in the world, especially when fate sideswipes us, reveal our core persona. With the residue garnered from a pastiche of unpleasant moments, we winnow out who we would prefer to be from who we actually are. Conflict, crisis, tragedy, and pathos force us to address whom we in reality contritely mushroomed into becoming.

This is a situation fraught with risk. In the regions where it is more deeply rooted—the Americas and Europe—representative democracy is in crisis. At the core of this crisis is the widening gap between people’s aspirations and the capacity of political institutions to respond to the demands of society. It is one of the ironies of our age that this deficit of trust in political institutions coexists with the rise of citizens capable of making the choices that shape their lives and influence the future of their societies. To put it in a nutshell, our challenge is to bridge the gap between demos and res publica, between people and the institutions of public interest, reweaving the threads that may reconnect the political system with the demands of society.1

Myth #3: Kaizen Is Slow; Innovation Is Quicker Perhaps the most dramatic example of what can happen when innovation is used and abused is Toyota, a company that calls kaizen its soul. For most of its history after World War II, Toyota exemplified quality automobile manufacturing. Consumers bought Toyotas not for the styling or prestige but for their unparalleled reliability. But by 2002, Toyota management decided it was not enough to build the highest-quality and most-profitable cars—it wanted to be the biggest car company in the world. And the company succeeded. It built factories rapidly and added enough capacity to produce three million additional automobiles in just six years. But productivity came at a high price: Suppliers could not sustain the quality for which Toyota was known, and the new factories did not have the time to build a kaizen culture. The result was over nine million recalls and some well-deserved bad publicity. Here is an internal memo written before the crisis became public: “We make so many cars in so many different places with so many people. Our greatest fear is that as we keep growing, our ability to maintain the discipline of kaizen will be lost.” —Teruo Suzuki General Manager, Human Resources In time, Toyota recognized that abandoning kaizen drove the company away from a commitment to its core principles. Since the crisis, Toyota has slowed down production, given local managers in the U.S. more responsibility for quality control, and trained new workers in the kaizen culture. Toyota has returned to focusing on quality, not quantity, as its mission, with an emphasis on correcting defects in production while they are small and easily fixed. And Toyota’s reputation for quality has been restored. The company’s story is an excellent illustration of the ways in which kaizen builds habits that can last a lifetime and helps avoid the painful consequences of steps that may, in retrospect, have been too big for the individual or the work group to swallow.

Charles Koch seemed to make that shift effortlessly. “He goes back to his core thinking of: What’s our point of view around what’s going to happen? How long is this downturn going to take? How is that going to affect people’s buying patterns?” Jones recalled. “And how long is it going to take—given this housing crisis—to get through this deleveraging?” If Charles Koch was more confident in his company’s future, he had reason to be. The company he oversaw in 2008 was larger, more diverse, and more adaptable than it had ever been before. It was built to withstand market shocks. Some divisions were hit hard, such as Koch’s building products divisions and its carpet fiber factories. But other divisions fared much better, such as its oil refineries and trading desks. The financial pain was very real, but there never seemed to be any doubt that Koch Industries would come out the other side as a healthy and profitable enterprise.

Continetti concludes: "An intellectual, financial, technological, and social infrastructure to undermine global capitalism has been developing for more than two decades, and we are in the middle of its latest manifestation… The occupiers’ tent cities are self-governing, communal, egalitarian, and networked. They reject everyday politics. They foster bohemianism and confrontation with the civil authorities. They are the Phalanx and New Harmony, updated for postmodern times and plopped in the middle of our cities. There may not be that many activists in the camps. They may appear silly, even grotesque. They may resist "agendas" and "policies." They may not agree on what they want or when they want it. And they may disappear as winter arrives and the liberals whose parks they are occupying lose patience with them. But the utopians and anarchists will reappear… The occupation will persist as long as individuals believe that inequalities of property are unjust and that the brotherhood of man can be established on earth." You can see why anarchists might find this sort of thing refreshingly honest. The author makes no secret of his desire to see us all in prison, but at least he’s willing to make an honest assessment of what the stakes are. Still, there is one screamingly dishonest theme that runs throughout the Weekly Standard piece: the intentional conflation of "democracy" with "everyday politics," that is, lobbying, fund-raising, working for electoral campaigns, and otherwise participating in the current American political system. The premise is that the author stands in favor of democracy, and that occupiers, in rejecting the existing system, are against it. In fact, the conservative tradition that produced and sustains journals like The Weekly Stand is profoundly antidemocratic. Its heroes, from Plato to Edmund Burke, are, almost uniformly, men who opposed democracy on principle, and its readers are still fond of statements like "America is not a democracy, it’s a republic." What’s more, the sort of arguments Continetti breaks out here--that anarchist-inspire movements are unstable, confused, threaten established orders of property, and must necessarily lead to violence--are precisely the arguments that have, for centuries. been leveled by conservatives against democracy itself. In reality, OWS is anarchist-inspired, but for precisely that reason it stands squarely in the very tradition of American popular democracy that conservatives like Continetti have always staunchly opposed. Anarchism does not mean the negation of democracy--or at least, any of the aspects of democracy that most American have historically liked. Rather, anarchism is a matter of taking those core democratic principles to their logical conclusions. The reason it’s difficult to see this is because the word "democracy" has had such an endlessly contested history: so much so that most American pundits and politicians, for instance, now use the term to refer to a form of government established with the explicit purpose of ensuring what John Adams once called "the horrors of democracy" would never come about. (p. 153-154)