Crucial Situation Quotes

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it. I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that's the way I knew things were all the time.

I liked looking at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it.

The most important of these skills, and power’s crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.

No one will help you when you are left with problems. so plan how to face the crucial situations alone. God doesn't give a problem which you cant solve.

It's certainly true that Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor and then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book attest, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor core was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding areas, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control. . . In the week after the accident, while refusing to admit to the world that anything really serious had gone wrong, the Soviets poured thousands of men into the breach. . . The machines they brought broke down because of the radiation. The humans wouldn't break down until weeks or months later, at which point they'd die horribly.

I wanted to see as much as I could. I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it. I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that's the way I knew things were all the time.

It’s crucial to go beyond merely concluding that a student’s challenging behavior gets him something he wants (for example, attention), allows him to escape and avoid tasks and situations that are difficult, uncomfortable, tedious, or scary, and is therefore “working.

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it. I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that's the way I knew things were all the time.

And there I was at night, chasing after the full moon behind the clouds like a mad man in search of the reflection of the light of love in another person, without daring to light up the spark of light that I had left within myself. It was nowhere to be seen, but I felt it was out there somewhere. I've surely seen it a couple of days ago up in the sky and my eyes couldn't have lied to me, it was so beautiful, or so it appeared to be. I guess I have to stop stalking what can't be seen for awhile and let the light of the full moon find its way through my messed up soul. Maybe it's time to go to sleep and trust that another sunrise will renew what the full moon couldn't clear away tonight. During all that time, I might've not found the light of the moon, but I rested deeply with the sound of the raindrops, while gazing at the quiet river flowing slowly. What a crucial moment to be alive!

The most important of these skills, and power’s crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings. Emotions cloud reason, and if you cannot see the situation clearly, you cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control.

In fact, being able to tolerate negative feelings can be crucial to a wide variety of life situations: delaying gratification, learning from bad experiences, truly hearing what other people have to say, and assessing our own circumstances, risks, and opportunities.

Culturally we are taught to disregard our gut instinct. But it is a crucial element of our ability to face and cope with traumatic situations.

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I’d stop and look so hard I never forgot it.

Once you shift into self-disconnection, you can no longer make choices in a situation. Therefore, learning to recognize and prevent dissociation is crucial. The steps in preventing dissociation are to stay in touch with yourself no matter what snap out of it when you start to zone out keep thinking of active ways to deal with the situation.

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations... I certainly learned a lot of things this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that's the way I knew things were all the time.

We're like the teenager who "will die" if he or she can't go to a certain rock concert or see a certain friend. Because we tell ourselves it's absolutely crucial that [things should be a certain way right now] we create turmoil and anxiety. It's not [the way things are] that causes pain, it's the meaning we give to these events and our demand that such things not happen. While we can have preferences, the minute we start insisting that people and situations be different, we create internal turmoil - anger, hostility, sadness, and so on. It's our attachments that lead us to donning a mask, blaming others, or feeling incomplete.

That the Sadian fantasy situates itself better in the bearers of Christian ethics than elsewhere is what our structural landmarks allow us to grasp easily. But that Sade, himself, refuses to be my neighbor, is what needs to be recalled, not in order to refuse it to him in return, but in order to recognize the meaning of this refusal. We believe that Sade is not close enough to his own wickedness to recognize his neighbor in it. A trait which he shares with many, and notably with Freud. For such is indeed the sole motive of the recoil of beings, sometimes forewarned, before the Christian commandment. For Sade, we see the test of this, crucial in our eyes, in his refusal of the death penalty, which history, if not logic, would suffice to show is one of the corollaries of Charity.

The moment you take 100 percent responsibility for everything in your life is the same moment you claim your power to change anything in your life. However, the crucial distinction is to realize that taking responsibility is not the same thing as accepting blame. while blame determines who is at fault for something, responsibility determines who is committed to improving a situation. It rarely matters who is at fault. All that matters is that you are committed to improving your situation.

In many careers, crucial decisions are deliberated in meetings with white boards and breakout sessions. Options are weighed. Exploratory committees are formed. Ideas are mulled over and then discarded. Gourmet coffee is consumed. Perhaps finger sandwiches are ordered from the catering joint down the street. The whole process can take hours, days, weeks. One of the most crucial decisions you make as a cop is Shoot or Don't Shoot. Given how quickly situations can go all sorts of wrong, you will probably have about a second and a half to deliberate before you make this call. Critics then have a lifetime to pick apart your decision over that coffee and those sandwiches.

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I’d stop and look so hard I never forgot it. I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time.

Although these days we commonly talk, hear, or read about 'ethical dilemmas' --- those difficult situations in which we truly are perplexed as to the right course of action --- it is crucial to recognize that these dilemmas, for most of us, represent the exception and not the rule in our lives...What typically is the rule in our daily lives is not a matter of knowing what is right and good but having the character to do what is right and good.

it’s crucial to make the right call about whether to use an algorithm or a heuristic in a specific situation. This is why the Google experiment with forty-one shades of blue seems so foreign to me, accustomed as I am to the Apple approach. Google used an A/B test to make a color choice. It used a single predetermined value criterion and defined it like so: The best shade of blue is the one that people clicked most often in the test. This is an algorithm.

Being able to tolerate negative feelings can be crucial to a wide variety of life situations: delaying gratification, learning from bad experiences, truly hearing what other people have to say, and assessing our own circumstances.

I realized it was conceivable that Ann and I both, in our own way, were experiencing a crisis, which according to its definition is: (1) a crucial stage or turning point, and (2) an unstable or precarious situation. At the very least,

I answered that as a neurologist and a psychiatrist, of course, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is not at all free from conditions. But I added that along with being a professor in two fields (neurology and psychiatry) I am a survivor of four camps (that is, concentration camps), and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is, and always remains, capable of resisting and braving even the worst conditions. To detach oneself from even the worst conditions is a uniquely human capability. [...] By virtue of this capacity man is capable of detaching himself not only from a situation but also from himself. He is capable of choosing his attitude toward himself. By doing so he really takes a stand toward his own somatic and psychic conditions and determinants. Understandably this is a crucial issue for psychotherapy and psychiatry, education and religion. For, seen in this light, a person is free to shape his own character, and man is responsible for what he may have made out of himself.

No person is mistake free. I made some phenomenal errors in the first fifty years of traversing the rivers and valleys that formulate life’s marshy banks. I will always live with some deep regrets. Personal mistakes are part of everybody’s learning processes. Some people do live more carefully than other people do. I was too reckless at times and on other crucial situations too conservative, neither of which factor is a cause for mortification. It would represent a much bigger mistake never to give myself the freedom to test what life proffers.

Being able to slowly and objectively size up a situation is crucial. We observe. We take a curious, yet concerned, attitude. We gather information in a relaxed, thoughtful manner, but we do not rush in to fix the problem. Using the information we’ve gathered, we determine what action to take.

Like Oz, life is full of beauty and horror. Whether you’re in the magical realm or the so-called civilized one, you can look at the world around you and see both things at almost any time. But what being in Oz taught me is that no matter how horrific a situation may be, no matter how devastating or scary or chaotic, there is still always beauty in the colors of it all, even in the grays. As I look back on the last four years of my life, on everything that led me to the place where my life changed forever for a second time, I might think I wasted too many crucial years perceiving my world through a lens that leeched the color from everything I set my eyes on, but now I can forgive myself for my mistakes and maybe even be grateful for the trials I’ve faced. After all, a rainbow only comes out when it rains. The most spectacular rainbows are set against a backdrop of a half dark sky where gray clouds hover and rain batters the surface of the earth, but the horizon is clear and bright—a pure, radiant blue surrounding a shining golden sun. When I’m in Oz, that rainbow is who I am—a vivid, radiant spectrum of colors with a clear bright landscape ahead only made more rich-hued and vibrant by the darkness that lies behind it.

January 26 May the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always in every way. 2 Thessalonians 3:16 I can't overemphasize the importance of peace as a real and practical benefit of our covenant relationship with God. His peace should not be an infrequent surprise but the ongoing rule of our lives. The apostle Paul, in the verse above, underscored the essential nature of peace. Did you notice how crucial he considered peace to be? “Always … in every way.” Peace can be possible in any situation, but we cannot produce it on demand. In fact, we can't produce it at all. It is a fruit of the Spirit. God's peace has already been given to us if we have received Christ.

It’s like I’m two different people. That’s why I think it’s crucial that you don’t define yourself as just one person. That, to me, is the sign of a fake. It’s the sign of someone who has this fantasy model of who they want everyone to think they are and just tries to act up to it all the time. When you’re true to yourself you know that you’re a different person in different situations, and you’re totally relaxed about it.

Given our socialization into dependency, women are also poor risk takers. (...) We avoid new situations, job changes, moves to different parts of the country. Women are afraid that if they should make a mistake, or do "the wrong thing", they'll be punished. Women are less confident than men in their ability to make judgments, and in relationships will often hand over the decision-making duties to their mates, a situation which only ensures that they will become less confident in their powers of judgment as time goes by. Most shockingly of all, women are less likely than men to fulfill their intellectual potential. (...) In fact, as women proceed into adulthood, they get lower and lower scores on "total intelligence", owing to the fact that they tend to use their intelligence less and less the longer they're away from school. Other studies show that the intellect's ability to function may actually be impaired by dependent personality traits. (...) Confidence and self-esteem are primary issues in women's difficulties with achievement. Lack of confidence leads us into the dark waters of envy. (...) envy must be recognized, seen, and fully comprehended; it can too easily be used as a cover-up for something that is far mroe crucial to women's independence - our own inner feelings of incompetence. These must be dealt with - directly - if we are ever to achieve confidence and strength.

A crucial point here is that understanding is not only a matter of reflection, using finitary propositions, on some preexistent, already determinate experience. Rather, understanding is the way we "have a world," the way we experience our world as a comprehensible reality. Such understanding, therefore, involves our whole being - our bodily capacities and skills, our values, our moods and attitudes, our entire cultural tradition, the way in which we are bound up with a linguistic community, our aesthetic sensibilities, and so forth. I short, our understanding is our mode of "being in the world." It is the way we are meaningfully situated in our world through our bodily interactions, our cultural institutions , our linguistic tradition, and our historical context. Our more abstract reflective acts of understanding (which may involve grasping of finitary propositions) are simply an extension of our understanding in this more basic sense of "having a world.

Before embarking on this intellectual journey, I would like to highlight one crucial point. In much of this book I discuss the shortcomings of the liberal worldview and the democratic system. I do so not because I believe liberal democracy is uniquely problematic but rather because I think it is the most successful and most versatile political model humans have so far developed for dealing with the challenges of the modern world. While it might not be appropriate for every society in every stage of development, it has proven its worth in more societies and in more situations than any of its alternatives. So when we are examining the new challenges that lie ahead of us, it is necessary to understand the limitations of liberal democracy and to explore how we can adapt and improve its current institutions. Unfortunately, in the present political climate any critical thinking about liberalism and democracy might be hijacked by autocrats and various illiberal movements, whose sole interest is to discredit liberal democracy rather than to engage in an open discussion about the future of humanity. While they are more than happy to debate the problems of liberal democracy, they have almost no tolerance of any criticism directed at them. As an author, I was therefore required to make a difficult choice. Should I speak my mind openly and risk that my words might be taken out of context and used to justify burgeoning autocracies? Or should I censor myself? It is a mark of illiberal regimes that they make free speech more difficult even outside their borders. Due to the spread of such regimes, it is becoming increasingly dangerous to think critically about the future of our species. After some soul-searching, I chose free discussion over self-censorship. Without criticizing the liberal model, we cannot repair its faults or move beyond it. But please note that this book could have been written only when people are still relatively free to think what they like and to express themselves as they wish. If you value this book, you should also value the freedom of expression.

Thus it went as she made her way around the biomes of Ring B. Always she found that her mother the great engineer had made some crucial intervention, finding solutions to problems that had stymied the locals. Devi had the knack of sidestepping dilemmas, Badim said when Freya mentioned this, by moving back several logical steps, and coming at the situation from some new way not yet noticed. “It’s sometimes called avoiding acquiescence,” Badim said. “Acquiescence means accepting the framing of a problem, and working on it from within the terms of the frame. It’s a kind of mental economy, but also a kind of sloth. And Devi does not have that kind of sloth, as you know. She is always interrogating the framing of the problem. Acquiescence is definitely not her mode.

But it is the nature of narcissistic entitlement to see the situation from only one very subjective point of view that says “My feelings and needs are all that matter, and whatever I want, I should get.” Mutuality and reciprocity are entirely alien concepts, because others exist only to agree, obey, flatter, and comfort – in short, to anticipate and meet my every need. If you cannot make yourself useful in meeting my need, you are of no value and will most likely be treated accordingly, and if you defy my will, prepare to feel my wrath. Hell hath no fury like the Narcissist denied. Narcissists hold these unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves uniquely special. In social situations, you will talk about them or what they are interested in because they are more important, more knowledgeable, or more captivating than anyone else. Any other subject is boring and won’t hold interest, and, in their eyes, they most certainly have a right to be entertained. In personal relationships, their sense of entitlement means that you must attend to their needs but they are under no obligation to listen to or understand you. If you insist that they do, you are “being difficult” or challenging their rights. How dare you put yourself before me? they seem to (or may actually) ask. And if they have real power over you, they feel entitled to use you as they see fit and you must not question their authority. Any failure to comply will be considered an attack on their superiority. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger rage and self-righteous aggression. The conviction of entitlement is a holdover from the egocentric stage of early childhood, around the age of one to two, when children experience a natural sense of grandiosity that is an essential part of their development. This is a transitional phase, and soon it becomes necessary for them to integrate their feelings of self-importance and invincibility with an awareness of their real place in the overall scheme of things that includes a respect for others. In some cases, however, the bubble of specialness is never popped, and in others the rupture is too harsh or sudden, as when a parent or caretaker shames excessively or fails to offer soothing in the wake of a shaming experience. Whether overwhelmed with shame or artificially protected from it, children whose infantile fantasies are not gradually transformed into a more balanced view of themselves in relation to others never get over the belief that they are the center of the universe. Such children may become self-absorbed “Entitlement monsters,” socially inept and incapable of the small sacrifices of Self that allow for reciprocity in personal relationships. The undeflated child turns into an arrogant adult who expects others to serve as constant mirrors of his or her wonderfulness. In positions of power, they can be egotistical tyrants who will have their way without regard for anyone else. Like shame, the rage that follows frustrated entitlement is a primitive emotion that we first learn to manage with the help of attuned parents. The child’s normal narcissistic rages, which intensify during the power struggles of age eighteen to thirty months – those “terrible twos” – require “optimal frustration” that is neither overly humiliating nor threatening to the child’s emerging sense of Self. When children encounter instead a rageful, contemptuous or teasing parent during these moments of intense arousal, the image of the parent’s face is stored in the developing brain and called up at times of future stress to whip them into an aggressive frenzy. Furthermore, the failure of parental attunement during this crucial phase can interfere with the development of brain functions that inhibit aggressive behavior, leaving children with lifelong difficulties controlling aggressive impulses.

Thanks to anti-Leary books such as Robert Greenfield’s Timothy Leary: A Biography (2006), psychedelic research currently follows a ‘blame Leary’ narrative. The negative public perception of psychedelics and psychedelic researchers, this argument goes, is solely down to the terrible irresponsible behaviour of this one man. If it wasn’t for Leary, psychedelics would be a respected form of academic study and the drugs would be legally used in therapeutic situations. When Leary’s ideas are utilised, such as his crucial theory of set and setting, he is typically not credited. The positive cultural aspects of the 1960s psychedelic explosion are ignored, and so is the issue of how many of these psychedelic researchers would have even heard of these drugs had it not been for Leary’s evangelical crusade.

When a baby chick hatches, it often struggles for a long, long time, and you can get impatient watching the little guy struggle. You might be tempted to help him out and break a little bit of the shell away and make it easier for him to escape, but if you do, he will die. You will rob him of a process specifically designed to make him strong. It is only through this struggle that he can gain the strength to survive his life. It is crucial (if you love him) that you let him struggle his way out of this challenge on his own. Your life works the same way. The challenges you currently face are there to help you become stronger and smarter too. They are probably forcing you to learn and grow. If you were rescued from this situation, it might rob you of a process you need to become the person you are meant to be.

The camera was a hand-held auxiliary of wanting-to-know. It had more than information and accuracy to teach me. I learned in the doing how ready I had to be. Life doesn't hold still. A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away. Photography taught me that to be able to capture transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the crucial moment, was the greatest need I had. Making pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture, and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment when I saw it. These were things a writer needed to know. And I felt the need to hold transient life in words - there's so much more of life that only words can convey - strongly enough to last me as long as I lived. The direction my mind took was a writer's direction from the start, not a photographer's or a recorder's.

Many people take this as evidence of duplicity or cynicism. But they don’t know what it’s like to be expected to make comments, almost every working day, on things of which they have little or no reliable knowledge or about which they just don’t care. They don’t appreciate the sheer number of things on which a politician is expected to have a position. Issues on which the governor had no strong opinions, events over which he had no control, situations on which it served no useful purpose for him to comment—all required some kind of remark from our office. On a typical day Aaron might be asked to comment on the indictment of a local school board chairman, the ongoing drought in the Upstate, a dispute between a power company and the state’s environmental regulatory agency, and a study concluding that some supposedly crucial state agency had been underfunded for a decade. Then there were the things the governor actually cared about: a senate committee’s passage of a bill on land use, a decision by the state supreme court on legislation applying to only one county, a public university’s decision to raise tuition by 12 percent. Commenting on that many things is unnatural, and sometimes it was impossible to sound sincere. There was no way around it, though. Journalists would ask our office about anything having remotely to do with the governor’s sphere of authority, and you could give only so many minimalist responses before you began to sound disengaged or ignorant or dishonest. And the necessity of having to manufacture so many views on so many subjects, day after day, fosters a sense that you don’t have to believe your own words. You get comfortable with insincerity. It affected all of us, not just the boss. Sometimes I felt no more attachment to the words I was writing than a dog has to its vomit.

he same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who’s more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don’t allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water’s edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent’s shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don’t rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child’s world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear

The same goes for new situations. Imagine a child who’s more afraid of the ocean than are other kids the same age. Thoughtful parents recognize that this fear is natural and even wise; the ocean is indeed dangerous. But they don’t allow her to spend the summer on the safety of the dunes, and neither do they drop her in the water and expect her to swim. Instead they signal that they understand her unease, while urging her to take small steps. Maybe they play in the sand for a few days with the ocean waves crashing at a safe distance. Then one day they approach the water’s edge, perhaps with the child riding on a parent’s shoulders. They wait for calm weather, or low tide, to immerse a toe, then a foot, then a knee. They don’t rush; every small step is a giant stride in a child’s world. When ultimately she learns to swim like a fish, she has reached a crucial turning point in her relationship not only with water but also with fear.

Most geniuses responsible for the major mutations in the history of thought seem to have certain features in common; on the one hand scepticism, often carried to the point of icon-oclasm, in their attitude towards traditional ideas, axioms and dogmas, towards everything that is taken for granted; on the other hand, an open-mindedness that verges on na- ïve credulity towards new concepts which seem to hold out some promise to their instinctive gropings. Out of this combination results that crucial capacity of perceiving a familiar object, situation, problem, or collection of data, in a sudden new light or new context: of seeing a branch not as part of a tree, but as a potential weapon or tool; of associating the fall of an apple not with its ripeness, but with the motion of the moon. The discoverer perceives relational patterns or functional analogies where nobody saw them before, as the poet perceives the image of a camel in a drifting cloud.

4. Your Ability to Self-Protect The ability to sense danger in your surroundings or untrustworthiness in other people depends on how well you listen to your gut feelings. To detect threat, you have to be aware of how situations and interactions make you feel. The primal instincts of the inner world are crucial to your safety. 5. Your Awareness of Your Life’s Purpose A good relationship with your inner world reveals what’s meaningful to you and directs your life’s purpose. If you don’t form that trusting relationship with your inner world, you will be dependent on whatever your peers, the culture, or authorities tell you to be. In part II of this book, you will learn more specific ways to get to know your inner world and how to engage in this process more deeply. EIPs’ Attitudes Toward Your Inner World Now let’s look at how EIPs view your inner world. Understanding EI parents’ attitudes toward your inner experiences will help you trust yourself instead of deferring to them. They See You as Still Needing Their Direction EI parents see their adult children as

No, I didn't. But I was aware that I was embarked on an epic. In the case of the Bradstreet poem, I didn't know. The situation with that poem was this. I invented the stanza in '48 and wrote the first stanza and the first three lines of the second stanza, and then I stuck. I had in mind a poem roughly the same length as another of mine, “The Statue”—about seven or eight stanzas of eight lines each. Then I stuck. I read and read and read and thought and collected notes and sketched for five years until, although I was still in the second stanza, I had a mountain of notes and draftings—no whole stanzas, but passages as long as five lines. The whole poem was written in about two months, after which I was a ruin for two years. When I finally got going, I had this incredible mass of stuff and a very good idea of the shape of the poem, with the exception of one crucial point, which was this. I'll tell you in a minute why and how I got going. The great exception was this: It did not occur to me to have a dialogue between them—to insert bodily Henry into the poem . . . Me, to insert me, in my own person, John Berryman, I, into the poem . . .

The hope is that when it comes to dealing with humans whose behaviors are among our worst and most damaging, words like 'evil' and 'soul' will be as irrelevant as when considering a car with faulty brakes, that they will be as rarely spoken in a courtroom as in an auto repair shop. And crucially, the analogy holds in a key way, extending to instances of dangerous people without anything obviously wrong with their frontal cortex, genes, and so on. When a car is being dysfunctional and dangerous and we take it to a mechanic, this is not a dualistic situation where (a) if the mechanic discovers some broken widget causing the problem, we have a mechanistic explanation, but (b) if the mechanic can’t find anything wrong, we’re dealing with an evil car; sure, the mechanic can speculate on the source of the problem—maybe it’s the blueprint from which the car was built, maybe it was the building process, maybe the environment contains some unknown pollutant that somehow impairs function, maybe someday we’ll have sufficiently powerful techniques in the auto shop to spot some key molecule in the engine that is out of whack—but in the meantime we’ll consider this car to be evil. Car free will also equals 'internal forces we do not understand yet.

The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it. For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can’t learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They’ve figured out how to incorporate preexisting knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible. For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists’ master algorithm is backpropagation, which compares a system’s output with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be. Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like backpropagation does, but creating the brain that those adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries’ master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms. Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes’ theorem and its derivates. Bayes’ theorem tells us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible. For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers’ master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

Here's a resume of crucial knowledge you should have in today's world but universities are not providing: Financial - Not just on management, but also on how to profit, how to manage and control flows of income; Linguistic - In today's world, speaking only a language is prove of lack of education. Knowing two languages is a basic necessity, and knowing three languages is essential, while knowing four is merely the ideal situation. Which four languages? Chinese, English, Spanish, and another of your choice, just for fun; Intellectual - It's not about what you know; it’s all about how you think about what you know. Therefore, it's ridiculous to think that there’s only one answer and one way to examine our life. Most students are extremely dumb because they lack the ability to educate themselves, despite their certificates or where they’ve studied. They never read with an intention in mind. And as they graduate, they become completely futile as individuals. This situation is the same all over the world. Millions are graduating every year, without any significant knowledge to live with. Their books are often outdated once they graduate and they're unable to learn by themselves and develop the necessary skills to adjust to the economic society in which we live. Maybe they can keep a job for 3 or 5 years of their life, but then are surprised to lose it and never finding a suitable job again. The world is changing very fast and most people can’t or are unwilling to recognize this fact.

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.

For fifteen years, John and Barbara Varian were furniture builders, living on a ranch in Parkfield, California, a tiny town where the welcome sign reads “Population 18.” The idea for a side business came about by accident after a group of horseback riding enthusiasts asked if they could pay a fee to ride on the ranch. They would need to eat, too—could John and Barbara do something about that? Yes, they could. In the fall of 2006, a devastating fire burned down most of their inventory, causing them to reevaluate the whole operation. Instead of rebuilding the furniture business (no pun intended), they decided to change course. “We had always loved horses,” Barbara said, “so we decided to see about having more groups pay to come to the ranch.” They built a bunkhouse and upgraded other buildings, putting together specific packages for riding groups that included all meals and activities. John and Barbara reopened as the V6 Ranch, situated on 20,000 acres exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Barbara’s story stood out to me because of something she said. I always ask business owners what they sell and why their customers buy from them, and the answers are often insightful in more ways than one. Many people answer the question directly—“We sell widgets, and people buy them because they need a widget”—but once in a while, I hear a more astute response. “We’re not selling horse rides,” Barbara said emphatically. “We’re offering freedom. Our work helps our guests escape, even if just for a moment in time, and be someone they may have never even considered before.” The difference is crucial. Most people who visit the V6 Ranch have day jobs and a limited number of vacation days. Why do they choose to visit a working ranch in a tiny town instead of jetting off to lie on a beach in Hawaii? The answer lies in the story and messaging behind John and Barbara’s offer. Helping their clients “escape and be someone else” is far more valuable than offering horse rides. Above all else, the V6 Ranch is selling happiness.

But if the same man is in a quiet corner of a bar, drinking alone, he will get more depressed. Now there’s nothing to distract him. Drinking puts you at the mercy of your environment. It crowds out everything except the most immediate experiences.2 Here’s another example. One of the central observations of myopia theory is that drunkenness has its greatest effect in situations of “high conflict”—where there are two sets of considerations, one near and one far, that are in opposition. So, suppose that you are a successful professional comedian. The world thinks you are very funny. You think you are very funny. If you get drunk, you don’t think of yourself as even funnier. There’s no conflict over your hilariousness that alcohol can resolve. But suppose you think you are very funny and the world generally doesn’t. In fact, whenever you try to entertain a group with a funny story, a friend pulls you aside the next morning and gently discourages you from ever doing it again. Under normal circumstances, the thought of that awkward conversation with your friend keeps you in check. But when you’re drunk? The alcohol makes the conflict go away. You no longer think about the future corrective feedback regarding your bad jokes. Now it is possible for you to believe that you are actually funny. When you are drunk, your understanding of your true self changes. This is the crucial implication of drunkenness as myopia. The old disinhibition idea implied that what was revealed when someone got drunk was a kind of stripped-down, distilled version of their sober self—without any of the muddying effects of social nicety and propriety. You got the real you. As the ancient saying goes, In vino veritas: “In wine there is truth.” But that’s backward. The kinds of conflicts that normally keep our impulses in check are a crucial part of how we form our character. All of us construct our personality by managing the conflict between immediate, near considerations and more complicated, longer-term considerations. That is what it means to be ethical or productive or responsible. The good parent is someone who is willing to temper their own immediate selfish needs (to be left alone, to be allowed to sleep) with longer-term goals (to raise a good child). When alcohol peels away those longer-term constraints on our behavior, it obliterates our true self. So who were the Camba, in reality? Heath says their society was marked by a singular lack of “communal expression.” They were itinerant farmworkers. Kinship ties were weak. Their daily labor tended to be solitary, the hours long.

The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.

A Piece of Advice « At all times and in all situations, examine your mindstream moment by moment: are thoughts positive or negative? When you recognize a thought to have negative content, be aware of its potential for harm and lay it aside. This is crucial. Otherwise, when craving or other negative thoughts start to take shape, if you let them take hold, who knows where you’ll wind up in the end? You may not care about becoming a great scholar, but at least do your best to generate goodwill toward others and steadfast devotion to the Three Jewels. Your future rebirths stretch out ahead much farther than this one life. The circumstances of those lifetimes will depend on your current aspirations, positive or negative. Don’t jeopardize your future lives by seeking fame and status in this life. The rest of this life will depend on how stable your virtuous aspirations are. See if you can transform your mindstream through the teachings. You have come to a fork in the road: one path goes up, the other down. If you wait till you’re on your deathbed to make your choice, you’ll be out of luck. Whether others have good or bad qualities is hard to know. Whether others applaud you or criticize you, you need to turn away from both craving praise and avoiding blame. Though you may not accomplish great acts of merit, at least avoid evil actions, great or small. Stop thinking badly of other beings. Don’t speak ill of anyone, because you never know when the person you malign might be a sublime being. In terms of food, clothes, and other material things, be content with what you’ve got and just stay put. Otherwise, one day you’ll end up a nuisance in everyone’s eyes, a show-off in robes who just rambles on from one valley to the next, sniffing around like a stray dog. Don’t do that! — Written by Patrul. May it bring virtue!

When faced with difficult situation and to develop confidence at such crucial times, ask yourself these: - When have I done something difficult... and survived? - When have I made wise choices? - What process have I used when making successful decisions?

Any examined human life involves the realization that we have been thrown into this world, without any choice, only to look forward to the prospect of being expelled at death. The sheer sense of bafflement and perplexity at this situation is crucial to spiritual awareness. To opt for a comforting, even a discomforting, explanation of what brought us here or what awaits us after death severely limits that very rare sense of mystery with which religion is essentially concerned. We thereby obscure with consoling man-made concepts that which most deeply terrifies and fascinates us.

Along with clarification of issues surrounding seizures, the court’s ruling stated that, “[t]he ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” What this established was that the crucial element was how the officer measured the situation and its elements at the time, regardless of what may have been discovered later.

Marco, remember early on when we discussed your frustration, and you determined that it was the defender part that wanted you to get back into the game of life? And that your anxiety was your fear-based defender part that was alerting you of the impending doom if you slipped and went back to your inappropriate behaviors? Or how about when the depression part stepped in, and you resolved that it was a reminder of your past actions? These are the physical symptoms of the defender parts.” I felt that if a light bulb was hanging over my head, it had now lit up. I was impressed with Keith’s memory of what I had said and the affection in his tone. At this moment, I trusted my therapist implicitly— he was the real deal. “Marco, identifying the defender part’s physical symptoms first is key to acknowledging when that part is coming in to control a situation or thought and identifying which one it is. Catching the defender part at this point is crucial to prevent it from starting to control the situation in an unhealthy manner or overwhelming your emotions with negative judgments.

People who do not have access to a good listener may not only be denied the opportunity to heighten their self-awareness, but they are also denied valuable feedback as to the validity and acceptability of their inner thoughts and feelings. By discussing these with others, we receive feedback as to whether these are experiences which others have as well, or whether they are less common. Furthermore, by gauging the reactions to our self-disclosures we learn what types are acceptable or unacceptable with particular people and in specific situations. […] The appropriate use of self-disclosure is crucial to the development and maintenance of long-term relationships […] Those who disclose either too much or too little tend to have problems in establishing and sustaining relationships.

Picture the athlete at the starting line of a race—adrenaline pumping, energy flowing, muscles tightening, skin aglow with anticipatory perspiration, heart beating faster and faster, the mind focused on only one thing: the starter’s gun and the race. Now, picture the person about to enter a social gathering. He or she approaches the door, behind which a number of people are talking, laughing, having fun—adrenaline pumping, energy flowing, pulse beginning to quicken, the mind focused on anticipation: “What will happen when I enter the room?” “Will I see anyone I know?” “What will they think of me?” What do these situations have in common? The answer is anxiety. For the athlete, anxiety is channeled into energy that just may win the race. By allowing the anxiety to play a role in gearing him or her up for the race, the athlete is making good use of the natural fight-or-flight response. For the partygoer, it is not so clear. If that person is willing to let being “keyed up” or “excited” be a positive kind of energy flow, then any initial nervousness or uncertainty will remain manageable and nonthreatening. But if the physical sensations of anxiety become distracting and the thoughts obsessive, the party guest is in for a difficult time. Similarly, a person who prepares for an important meeting may feel a kind of nervous energy in gearing up for negotiations. But if that same person, although well prepared, allows interactive inhibition to keep him from suggesting a solution, questioning a point, or voicing an opinion, he will feel a real letdown. When holding back becomes a habit, the pervasive feeling of “Oh no, I did it again” may lead to a lack of enthusiasm that interferes with productivity and job satisfaction. The truth is, we all want to be heard without—if we can reasonably avoid it—being rejected or embarrassed. How to resolve this dilemma? First, by understanding anxiety in its simplest terms. The more you understand about anxiety, the more you will be able to control it. Remember, social anxiety is not some abstract phenomenon or indelible personality trait. It is an explainable dynamic that you can choose to control. Let’s look more closely at the athlete. For that person, in that situation, anxiety is normal and appropriate. In fact, it is crucial to effective performance. Without it, the physiological workings of the body would fall short of what is required. In the second example, anxiety is also appropriate. But it can become negative if the person begins to worry about what is going on inside the room: “What are they laughing about?” “Will anyone talk to me?” “Am I dressed right?” “Will I seem nervous?” At that point it’s the degree of incapacity—the extent to which the anxious feelings and thoughts prevent interacting—that becomes the most important issue. (In the workplace, these thoughts may run to “Have I done enough research?” “What if I can’t answer my boss’s questions?” “Can they tell I’m anxious?”)

Proxemics Proxemics is the study of how people use space. As a rule, people reveal how they feel toward each other by the distance they maintain between them. You can test this by observing people’s behavior in public. Where you place yourself in relation to others gives them direct information as to how you feel about them. Where they place themselves relative to you communicates a similar message to you. You can use this to understand the messages that others send to you, and to make sure that you in turn are sending appropriate messages to them. Different levels of physical closeness are appropriate for different levels of intimacy. Familiarize yourself with the four conversation zones listed below, and use the knowledge to interact more effectively: 1. Intimate distance: From actual touch to eighteen inches away. This distance is reserved for those people we are emotionally closest to. Sharing this zone is a sign of trust and an indication that one’s defenses have been lowered. When this zone is invaded inappropriately, we feel uncomfortable and threatened. It was the inability to recognize this distance that got Phil into trouble on his date with Carol. In dating, observing your companion’s reaction as you move into this zone is crucial. If you move within eighteen inches of your partner and he or she doesn’t retreat, it is an indication that the other person is comfortable. If the person moves away—even slightly—it is an indication that you have entered the intimate zone prematurely. If other indications suggest that this companion does in fact enjoy your company, continue to proceed. Most people will truly appreciate your ability to read them—much less awkward than having to discuss these things in the early stages of a friendship or potential romance! 2. Personal distance: Eighteen inches to four feet. This is the zone occupied by people who feel comfortable together. Eighteen inches is the distance at which most couples stand when in public, and the distance at which close friends might stand if they were having an intimate conversation. The far end of this range, from two and a half to four feet, is the zone beyond arm’s length. While this distance still indicates a reasonably close relationship, it is not nearly as intimate as the range of one and a half to three feet. 3. Social distance: Four to twelve feet. Generally the distance between people who work together and between the salesperson and customer in a store. The span of seven to twelve feet is usually reserved for more formal and impersonal situations. 4. Public distance: Twelve to twenty-five feet. The closer end of the span, twelve feet away, is what teachers usually use in the classroom. Anything further away suggests a lecture situation, in which conversation is almost impossible.

HOW TO CLOSE THE CONVERSATION Timing is crucial in closing a conversation. If you let your anxiety dictate your actions, you may end it too soon and lose out on the opportunity to move from the first conversational level to the second. If a conversation goes on too long, with one or the other doing all the talking, both you and your partner may feel drained or bored. Closing the conversation is similar to changing the subject. You can use the same techniques to offer the other person a chance to agree to conclude (a trip to the buffet table or bar, the need to “get back to work,” a chance to speak to the host or guest of honor). Follow with a comment such as “I’ve really enjoyed talking with you,” perhaps adding, “I hope we can talk again soon.” If the person responds favorably, it is okay to follow up with a suggested plan for a future meeting; if the interaction is a social one, ask for the person’s phone number, or offer yours (“Are you in the book? I’d like to call you sometime,” or “My number’s in the book. Give me a call if you’d like to get together”). In workplace situations, you might say, “I could use some feedback on my next project. Could we arrange a time that I could run it by you?” If the response is very favorable, you might even suggest a specific time and date to get together. As you conclude, say the person’s name again (if he or she is a new acquaintance), and reiterate with body language and with words that you have enjoyed talking with him or her. Smile and maintain eye contact. Then, give a warm handshake or nod, if it is appropriate, and be on your way. Don’t draw the ending out—a protracted closing to a conversation can be counterproductive. Unlike the beginning of the conversation—where almost anything can serve as an opener—the ending does make a lasting impression, so be sure to end in a friendly, confident, and upbeat manner. One more thing: Many people find they are intrigued by a person whom they feel they didn’t get to talk to long enough. It’s much better to leave before you’ve said everything you could possibly think of to say. That way, there will be more to talk about next time!

Capital also highlights how capitalism produces a key ideology, which is not a false consciousness hiding the various machinations of the system and controlling the masses by cultivating and maintaining their stupidity, but by producing a rather clever working class that can criticize and even understand the complexities of capitalism. The crucial ideology of capitalism is not one that keeps the truth from the masses, but one that produces a situation in which the masses produce their own truth that functions to shape their desire in such a way that, although critical and angry, it contains little revolutionary expectation.

The metaphor of light is among the most powerful and consistent in all of Scripture. In God’s work of creation, the separation of light from darkness is one of the most crucial moments in the creation of the entire cosmos. The difference between light and darkness is the difference between knowledge and ignorance, between life and death. So when the New Testament refers to believers as the children of light in the midst of the children of darkness, we immediately understand the power of this metaphor. It situates the church as the people of Christ within a culture that is not spiritually neutral, but antagonistic.

The camera was a hand-held auxiliary of wanting-to-know. It had more than information and accuracy to teach me. I learned in the doing how ready I had to be. Life doesn’t hold still. A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away. Photography taught me that to be able to capture transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the crucial moment, was the greatest need I had. Making pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture; and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment when I saw it. These were things a story writer needed to know. And I felt the need to hold transient life in words—there’s so much more of life that only words can convey—strongly enough to last me as long as I lived. The direction my mind took was a writer’s direction from the start, not a photographer’s, or a recorder’s.

The medium through which this most often happens is cooperative, including linguistic, communication. Cooperative and linguistic communication are thus of crucial importance in children’s developing skills for jointly attending with others to external situations and to one another’s ideas—and for mentally coordinating within those shared realities. But cooperative and linguistic communication are interesting and important in their own right as well.

Mindfulness is essential to frame control. It's crucial to just pay attention to your surroundings, thoughts, feelings, and responses to the situation or encounter in which you find yourself.

Paradigms also generate predictions, and a crucial test of a paradigm’s validity and usefulness is the extent to which the predictions derived from it turn out to be more accurate than those from alternative paradigms. A statist paradigm, for instance, leads John Mearsheimer to predict that “the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. Great powers that share a long and unprotected common border, like that between Russia and Ukraine, often lapse into competition driven by security fears. Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do.

So, emotional intelligence revolves around empathy, and the ability to understand and manage your emotions.  Managing emotions is about understanding the trigger that had caused a particular emotion, and not responding to the trigger until you've had time to fully understand what you are feeling and why. And when you can manage your emotions, you can manage any situation you find yourself in.

We lose self-control. It’s easy to slip back into some routines without realizing. That could be checking Facebook first thing in the morning, while still in bed. The first thoughts we feed our mind with, though, are crucial to what mood we’ll be in for the day. Ultimately, how we start our days shapes who we become and what our life looks like. If each new day begins by scrolling down a feed just because it’s something you’re used to and do effortlessly, then you end up watching a video or a few without wanting to. You see an old relative inviting you to play a game, someone from college posting details about their life that they could have kept for themselves, another guy you barely know sharing photos from their holiday, and much more. Does it feel right to let these people in your head, overwhelm yourself with that unnecessary information, and even let your brain start comparing your situation with theirs? No. That’s time-wasting and harmful for many reasons.

Transforming Challenges into Opportunities: Enhancing Problem-Solving Skills through Critical Thinking In today's fast-paced and competitive business world, the ability to think critically and solve problems effectively is crucial for success. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or a budding startup owner, developing strong problem-solving skills can give you a significant edge in the market. By harnessing the power of critical thinking, you can transform challenges into opportunities and propel your business towards success. As a coach for business start-ups and a catalyst for innovation, I understand the importance of equipping entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to overcome obstacles and thrive in the face of adversity. In this blog post, I will explore how honing your critical thinking skills can help you navigate the challenges of starting and growing a business. 1. Identifying the Problem: Critical thinking involves the ability to accurately identify and define the problem at hand. As a coach for business start-up ideas, I can help you analyze your unique challenges and break them down into manageable parts. By clarifying the problem, you can focus your efforts on finding the most effective solution. 2. Analyzing Different Perspectives: One of the key aspects of critical thinking is considering different perspectives and viewpoints. When faced with a problem, it is important to step back and evaluate the situation from various angles. This allows you to gain valuable insights and uncover opportunities that may not be immediately apparent. As a coach, I can guide you through this process, helping you see the bigger picture and explore alternative solutions. 3. Developing Creative Solutions: Critical thinking encourages out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to generate creative solutions. By breaking away from conventional thought patterns, you can discover innovative approaches to solving problems. As your coach, I can help you tap into your creative potential and unlock new possibilities for your business. 4. Evaluating Risks and Benefits: Effective problem-solving requires a thorough analysis of the risks and benefits associated with different solutions. Through critical thinking, you can weigh the pros and cons, assess potential outcomes, and make informed decisions. As your coach, I can guide you in evaluating the risks and benefits of various options, enabling you to make strategic choices that align with your business goals. 5. Adapting to Change: In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, adaptability is crucial. Critical thinking allows you to embrace change and adapt your strategies as needed. By honing your problem-solving skills, you can navigate unexpected challenges with ease and turn them into opportunities for growth. As your coach, I can provide you with the tools and techniques to foster adaptability and resilience in the face of change. In conclusion, developing strong problem-solving skills through critical thinking is essential for entrepreneurs and business start-ups. By working with a coach who specializes in business start-up ideas, you can enhance your problem-solving abilities, uncover new opportunities, and position your business for long-term success. So, why wait? Invest in your critical thinking skills today and unlock the potential within your business. If you are looking for a coach to guide you in transforming challenges into opportunities, I am here to help. Contact me to explore how we can work together to enhance your problem-solving skills and achieve your business goals. Keywords: coach startup ideas, coach for business start-up, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, challenges, opportunities, entrepreneurs, innovation, analyze, creative solutions, risks, benefits, adaptability.

It’s crucial to go further than simply concluding that a student’s concerning behaviors are working at getting them something they want (for example, attention) and escaping and avoiding tasks and situations that are difficult, uncomfortable, tedious, or scary. A good functional assessment needs to explain why a student is going about getting, escaping, and avoiding in such a maladaptive fashion (lagging skills) and when that is occurring (unsolved problems).

Is there still time for us to repent, or is it already too late? Before we continue, a word to those who do not believe we have time to repent, who believe that God must judge us because of what we already have done—and not done. Such beliefs are not biblical, and those who hold them are themselves enjoined to repent. To sulk like Jonah at what seems to be God’s forbearance with those we deem irredeemably wicked is only to become the enemies of God ourselves. Those who petulantly have decided that nothing we do now can avert judgment are themselves participating in bringing about that judgment by doing nothing. Their unwillingness to fight now will likely be the very thing that makes the crucial difference. It is ironic and tragic that they sit on the sidelines alongside those they blame for the situation.

He failed to recognize that what works best in most cases is to appeal to a man's interest.But you don't have to get similarly lousy results when you face similar situations. Just remember what happened to Gutfreund and his general counsel. The right lessons are easily learned if you'll work at it. And if you do learn them, you can be especially useful at crucial moments when others fail.

Keep your cool: This is perhaps the most crucial factor in successfully dealing with a defiant child. Yelling, shouting, and scolding are likely to fuel the defiance and worsen the situation

To successfully reduce your anger and more sanely face life’s difficulties, give up the idea that unfair situations, difficult people, and great frustrations automatically make you furious. Yes, they help. But you still largely create what you feel. To accept that responsibility is a crucial first

If we truly know why we trust God—and that crucial if must be answered with full intellectual and spiritual assurance—if we truly know why we trust God, then God is greater than all, and God may be trusted in all situations, despite everyone and everything.

Although routines and standards are clearly related, they are not identical. As Kindleberger (1983) pointed out, standards are public goods; they reflect interpersonally shared knowledge. We might even say that a standard is a certain kind of “public” routine that helps to coordinate private (individual or intraorganizational) routines. But routines are not only about coordination. As we saw, routines embody potentially useful—we might even say productive—knowledge. In the terminology of Ryle (1949), they reflect “knowledge how.” In some cases, such useful knowledge can be knowledge about how to transact, the possession of which thus reduces transaction costs. My internalized knowledge that I always ought to keep to the right (not the left) as another car approaches might be an example, at least if we construe the interaction between oncoming drivers metaphorically as a transaction. But the skillful exercise of a particular technique for suturing an incision would also be a routine, and not one obviously involving the reduction of transaction costs. Useful knowledge applied to problems of transacting is a special case of a more general phenomenon. As Winter (1988) has suggested, one needs to have economic capabilities (an effective repertoire of routines) in order to be able to transact as well as to be able to produce.6 Like standards, routines can be both enabling and constraining. The possession of an effective repertoire of routines would be crucial to the successful production of product A; but possessing that repertoire might also inhibit a transition to the production of product B. Routines are generally as hard to unlearn as to learn, which may give the advantage in situations of radical innovation to those who have never learned the routines in the first place.7 This is no doubt what Schumpeter (1934) had in mind when he wrote that “new combinations are, as a rule, embodied, as it were, in new firms which generally do not arise out of the old ones but start producing beside them;... in general it is not the

the mantra of an innovative educator. I am an educator. I am an innovator. I am an innovative educator and I will continue to ask, “What is best for learners?” With this empathetic approach, I will create and design learning experiences. I believe that my abilities, intelligence, and talents can be developed, leading to the creation of new and better ideas. I recognize that there are obstacles in education, but, as an innovator, I will focus on what is possible today and where I can push to lead towards tomorrow. I will utilize the tools that are available to me today, and I will continue to search for new and better ways to grow, develop, and share my thinking, while creating and connecting my learning. I focus not only on where I can improve, but where I am already strong, and I look to develop those strengths in myself and in others. I build upon what I already know, but I do not limit myself. I’m open to and willing to embrace new learning, while continuously asking questions that help me move forward. I question thinking, challenge ideas, and do not accept, “This is the way we have always done it” as an acceptable answer for our students or myself. I model the learning and leadership I seek in others. I take risks, try new things to develop, and explore new opportunities. I ask others to take risks in their learning, and I openly model that I’m willing to do the same. I believe that isolation is the enemy of innovation, and I will learn from others to create better learning opportunities for others and myself. I connect with others both locally and globally to tap into ideas from all people and spaces. I will use those ideas, along with my professional judgment, to adapt the ideas to meet the needs of the learners in my community. I believe in my voice and experiences, as well as the voice and experiences of others, as they are important for moving education forward. I share because the learning I create and the experiences I have help others. I share to push my own thinking and to make an impact on learners, both young and old, all over the world. I listen and learn from different perspectives because I know we are much better together than we could ever be alone. I can learn from anyone and any situation. I actively reflect on my learning because I know looking back is crucial to moving forward. If we all embrace this mindset, imagine what education could become.

ANXIOUS CONTRACTIONS Life is movement. It’s dynamic and pulsating like a swift moving river. To be in a contented and happy state is to be in a state of flow where your thoughts and feelings follow a natural current and there is no inner friction or need to check in on your anxiety every five minutes. When you feel in flow, your body feels light and your mind becomes spontaneous and joyful. Anxiety and fear are the total opposite. They’re the contractions of life. When we get scared, we contract in fear. Our bodies become stiff and our minds become fearful and rigid. If we hold that contracted state, we eventually cut ourselves off from life. We lose flexibility. We lose our flow. We can think of this a bit like pulling a muscle. When a muscle is overused and tired, its cells run out of energy and fluid. This can lead to a sudden and forceful contraction, such as a cramp. This contraction is painful and scary as it comes without warning. In the same way, we can be living our lives with a lot of stress and exhaustion, similar to holding a muscle in an unusual position for too long. If we fail to notice and take care of this situation, we can experience an intense and sudden moment of anxiety or even panic. I call this an “anxious contraction,” and it can feel quite painful. Learning how to respond correctly to this anxious contraction is crucial and determines how quickly we release it. Anxious contractions happen to almost everyone at some point in their lives. We suddenly feel overwhelmed with anxiety as our body experiences all manner of intense sensations, such as a pounding heart or a tight chest or a dizzy sensation. Our anxiety level then is maybe an 8 or 9 out of 10. We recoil in fear and spiral into a downward loop of more fear and anxiety. Some might say they had a spontaneous panic attack while others might describe the feeling as being very “on edge.”   THE ANXIETY LOOP It’s at this point in time where people get split into those that develop an anxiety disorder and those that don’t. The real deciding factor is whether a person gets caught in the “anxiety loop” or not. The anxiety loop is a mental trap, a vicious cycle of fearing fear. Instead of ignoring anxious thoughts or bodily sensations, the person becomes acutely aware and paranoid of them. “What if I lose control and do something crazy?” “What if those sensations come back again while I’m in a meeting?” “What if it’s a sign of a serious health problem?” This trap is akin to quicksand. Our immediate response is to struggle hard to free ourselves, but it’s the wrong response. The more we struggle, the deeper we sink. Anxiety is such a simple but costly trap to fall into. All your additional worry and stress make the problem worse, fueling more anxiety and creating a vicious cycle or loop. It’s like spilling gasoline onto a bonfire: the more you fear the bodily sensations, the more intense they feel. I’ve seen so many carefree people go from feeling fine one day to becoming fearful of everyday situations simply because they had one bad panic attack and then got stuck in this anxious loop of fearing fear. But there is great hope. As strange as it sounds, the greatest obstacle to healing your anxiety is you. You’re the cure. Your body wants to heal your anxiety as much as you do.

I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we- so incontrovertibly- are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can work at making sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. I am as passionately interested in where I am as is a lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on an open ocean. I have at the moment a situation which allows me to devote considerable hunks of time to seeing what I can see, and trying to piece it together. I’ve learned the name of some color-patches, but not the meanings. I’ve read books; I’ve gathered statistics feverishly: the average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees F…The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which is mostly oxygen…In these Appalachians we have found a coal bed with 120 seams, meaning 120 forests that just happened to fall into water…I would like to see it all, to understand it, but I must start somewhere, so I try to deal with the giant water bug in Tinker Creek and the flight of three hundred redwings from an Osage orange and let those who dare worry about the birthrate and population explosion among solar systems. So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so. The first question- the one crucial one- of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing is a blank one… The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter; they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy then is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.

For a number of reasons, the church has become widely viewed as either irrelevant, the object of contempt, or both. The situation is complex, but two factors stand out. First, a narrow approach to the idea of salvation, as expressed in the blood atonement and with Jesus as the exclusive divine Savior, has played into the hands of a church seeking political power at the expense of the inclusive wisdom of its own gospel. “Getting saved” not only is a static and highly individualistic phenomenon but narrows and domesticates the redemptive activity of God in ways that conform all too conveniently to the worldview of the new American empire. In a land of entitled bargain hunters, salvation becomes the ultimate bargain. Second, the notion of covenant as a collective expression of gratitude and mutuality has been trampled beneath a culture whose real devotion is to private ambition. The religious impulse, born in epiphanies that awaken us to our responsibilities to and for one another, is fundamentally corrupted when it is reduced to an individual balm. Faith is always supposed to make it harder, not easier, to ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers. In short, the church must make a crucial choice now between wisdom theology and salvation theology— between the Jesus who transforms and the Christ who saves. One is the biblical ethic of justice; the other is a postbiblical invention that came to fullness only after the Protestant Reformation.

The less affluent must be able, at least in theory, to catch up with the more affluent. Hence politics remains without substance, a realm from which the crucial dimensions of life, the core values, are excluded.42 Who, then, can criticize this situation?

The studio’s photographic activity lay quietly in hibernation, and not even your mother’s friends left their beloved Södermalm to support the studio despite their eagerly expressed curiosity for what they called “the colorful, multicultural suburb.” I never really understood the meaning of this expression. The neighborhood in the vicinity of the studio was not particularly separated from the neighborhood in Hornstull where you localized your lodgings. The same rectangular box houses, the same brown house colors. The same brightly shining mailboxes, the same Konsum grocery, the same Apoteket sign. The same red-nosed alcoholics who sat mumbling on the benches outside Systembolaget. The same Assyrians who started the same pizzerias with the same clever Italian names. Sometimes I noticed that people from Södermalm truly enjoyed pointing out every crucial difference between “the suburbs” and “downtown.” Sometimes I thought that the situation was similar to when tourists in Tabarka enjoyed pointing out the crucial difference between “the mystique of the Orient” and “the stress and pressure of the Western world.

Several forms of thinking play a crucial role in preparing and readying us for conflict, violence or crisis.  These include the “if – then or when-then thinking; when X happens, then I will do… Y”. Positive self-talk and visualizing the situation are positive tools that develop patterns in your mind (like any other form of training) in an effort to anticipate threats as we explore the situation, make an situational assessment and plan  an adaptable response to a predator we can’t fully anticipate. We need to become students of human behavior, both normal and aberrant, to rapidly recognize the difference between the two and be ready to instantly respond correctly and accurately.  Inherent in this understands the various dimensions of aberrant behavior between deviant, dangerous, suspicious, under the influence, and psychiatric.

So, James is exhorting us to count it all joy even when it is not all joy, not because it is joyous to be involved in pain and suffering, but because God can bring good through that pain and suffering. He is working in even the difficult situations for our sanctification.

The crucial lesson to remember is that if someone has confidence that something will succeed, grounded in a realistic estimation of the risks involved, then fear is just another obstacle to success. Taking risks without anticipating the consequences is foolish, of course, but if you have examined a situation thoroughly and still believe that there is a way through it, it may be worth the risk involved after all.

Negotiate success. Because no other single relationship is more important, you need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with your new boss (or bosses) and manage her expectations. This means carefully planning for a series of critical conversations about the situation, expectations, working style, resources, and your personal development. Crucially, it means developing and gaining consensus on your 90-day plan.

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Statements such as ‘There are systems, there are memories, there are cultures, there is artificial intelligence’76 depend on the statement ‘There is information.’ Also the statement ‘There are genes’ can only be understood as a product of the new situation—it indicates the leap of the principle of information into the sphere of nature. On the basis of these gains in concepts that are capable of seizing hold of reality, the interest in traditional figures of theory such as the subject-object relation fades. The constellation of ego and world has lost its sheen, to say nothing of the polarity of individual and society that has become completely lusterless. What is crucial is that with the idea of really existing memories and self-organizing systems the metaphysical distinction between nature and culture becomes untenable, because both sides of the difference only present regional states of information and its processing. One must brace oneself for the fact that understanding this insight will be especially difficult for intellectuals who have made their living on positioning culture against nature, and now suddenly find themselves in a reactive situation.

Faced with the Führer, Hácha caved in. He declared that the situation was very clear and that all resistance was madness. But it’s already two a.m., and he has only four hours to prevent the Czech people from defending themselves. According to Hitler, the German military machine is already on the march (true) and nothing can stop it (at least, no one seems very keen to try). Hácha must sign the surrender immediately and inform Prague. The choice Hitler is offering could not be simpler: either peace now, followed by a long collaboration between the two nations, or the total annihilation of Czechoslovakia. President Hácha, terrified, is left in a room with Göring and Ribbentrop. He sits at a table, the document before him. All he has to do now is sign it. The pen is in his hand, but his hand is trembling. The pen keeps stopping before it can touch the paper. In the absence of the Führer, who rarely stays to oversee such formalities, Hácha gets jumpy. “I can’t sign this,” he says. “If I sign the surrender, my people will curse me forever.” This is perfectly true. So Göring and Ribbentrop have to convince Hácha that it’s too late to turn back. This leads to a farcical scene where, according to witnesses, the two Nazi ministers literally chase Hácha around the table, repeatedly putting the pen back in his hand and ordering him to sign the bloody thing. At the same time, Göring yells continuously: if Hácha continues to refuse, half of Prague will be destroyed within two hours by the German air force … and that’s just for starters! Hundreds of bombers are waiting for the order to take off, and they will receive that order at 6:00 a.m. if the surrender is not signed. At this crucial moment, Hácha goes dizzy and faints. Now it’s the two Nazis who are terrified, standing there over his inert body. He absolutely must be revived: if he dies, Hitler will be accused of murdering him in his own office. Thankfully, there is an expert injecter in the house: Dr. Morell, who will later inject Hitler with amphetamines several times a day until his death—a medical regime that probably had some link with the Führer’s growing dementia. So Morell suddenly appears and sticks a syringe into Hácha, who wakes up. A telephone is shoved into his hand. Given the urgency of the situation, the paperwork can wait. Ribbentrop has taken care to install a special direct line to Prague. Gathering what is left of his strength, Hácha informs the Czech cabinet in Prague of what is happening in Berlin, and advises them to surrender. He is given another injection and taken back to see the Führer, who presents him once again with that wretched document. It is nearly four a.m. Hácha signs. “I have sacrificed the state in order to save the nation,” he believes. The imbecile. It’s as if Chamberlain’s stupidity was contagious …

every major discussion of ethics these days begins with an analysis of the chaotic situation of modern culture. Even secular writers and thinkers are calling for some sort of basic agreement on ethical behavior. Humanity’s “margin of error,” they say, is shrinking with each new day. Our survival is at stake. These “prophets of doom” point out that man’s destructive capability increased from 1945 to 1960 by the same ratio as it did from the primitive weapons of the Stone Age to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The thawing of the Cold War provided little comfort. Numerous nations have nuclear arms now or are close to having them. What, besides

It is what human beings do. We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves, which means that students in an elite school—except, perhaps, those at the very top of the class—are going to face a burden that they would not face in a less competitive atmosphere. Citizens of happy countries have higher suicide rates than citizens of unhappy countries, because they look at the smiling faces around them and the contrast is too great. Students at “great” schools look at the brilliant students around them, and how do you think they feel? The phenomenon of relative deprivation applied to education is called—appropriately enough—the “Big Fish–Little Pond Effect.” The more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities. Students who would be at the top of their class at a good school can easily fall to the bottom of a really good school. Students who would feel that they have mastered a subject at a good school can have the feeling that they are falling farther and farther behind in a really good school. And that feeling — as subjective and ridiculous and irrational as it may be — matters. How you feel about your abilities — your academic “self-concept” — in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It’s a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.

Recall the CEO who used this strategy when his people started freaking out about a sales campaign that was crucial to the company’s survival. He calmed and focused his team by having them break down the campaign into specific tasks, divide the list into easy and hard tasks, and then make quick progress on the easy ones. This strategy transformed a situation where people felt overwhelmed and helpless into one where, after accomplishing a string of small wins, they felt a strong link between their actions and meaningful changes around them – which is how behavioral scientists define the perception of control.

the following criteria are pertinent to a definition of insight: 1. Experience. A problem situation in which the crucial ex- perience must be acquired with the solution probably provides most favorable controls for

One of the methods that he and Bowie used on Low was the “Oblique Strategies” he’d created with artist Peter Schmidt the year before. It was a deck of cards, and each card was inscribed with a command or an observation. When you got into a creative impasse, you were to turn up one of the cards and act upon it. The commands went from the sweetly banal (“Do the washing up”) to the more technical (“Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation”; “The tape is now the music”). Some cards contradict each other (“Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities”; “Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics”). Some use Wildean substitution (“Don’t be afraid of things because they’re easy to do”). And several veer towards the Freudian (“Your mistake was a hidden intention”; “Emphasise the flaws”). The stress is on capitalising on error as a way of drawing in randomness, tricking yourself into an interesting situation, and crucially leaving room for the thing that can’t be explained—an element that every work of art needs. Did the Oblique Strategy cards actually work? They were probably more important symbolically than practically. A cerebral theoretician like Eno had more need of a mental circuit-breaker than someone like Bowie, who was a natural improviser, collagiste, artistic gadfly. Anyone involved in the creative arts knows that chance events in the process play an important role, but to my mind there’s something slightly self-defeating about the idea of “planned accidents.” Oblique Strategies certainly created tensions, as Carlos Alomar explained to Bowie biographer David Buckley: “Brian Eno had come in with all these cards that he had made and they were supposed to eliminate a block. Now, you’ve got to understand something. I’m a musician. I’ve studied music theory, I’ve studied counterpoint and I’m used to working with musicians who can read music. Here comes Brian Eno and he goes to a blackboard. He says: ‘Here’s the beat, and when I point to a chord, you play the chord.’ So we get a random picking of chords. I finally had to say, ‘This is bullshit, this sucks, this sounds stupid.’ I totally, totally resisted it. David and Brian were two intellectual guys and they had a very different camaraderie, a heavier conversation, a Europeanness. It was too heavy for me. He and Brian would get off on talking about music in terms of history and I’d think, ‘Well that’s stupid—history isn’t going to give you a hook for the song!’ I’m interested in what’s commercial, what’s funky and what’s going to make people dance!” It may well have been the creative tension between that kind of traditionalist approach and Eno’s experimentalism that was more productive than the “planned accidents” themselves. As Eno himself has said: “The interesting place is not chaos, and it’s not total coherence. It’s somewhere on the cusp of those two.

Amazon, for its part, has a couple of other easy suggestions for you if the advice “write a hypothetical press release” doesn’t quite work for your situation. Their CTO, Werner Vogels, suggests trying to write an FAQ for this product you’re developing. (That way you can address, in advance, potential user issues and questions.)9 Or try to define the crucial parts of the user experience by making mockups of pages, writing hypothetical case studies so you can actually start to see what it would look like and who it would work for and how. Finally, try writing the user manual, which as Werner explains usually has three parts: concepts, how-to, and reference. (Defining these means you understand your idea in and out from the customers perspective. Also, he says, if you have more than one type of user then write multiple manuals.)

But there is another case for curating as a vanguard activity for the twenty-first century. As the artist Tino Sehgal has pointed out, modern societies find themselves today in an unprecedented situation: The problem of lack, or scarcity, which has been the primary factor motivating scientific and technological innovation, is now joined and even superseded by the problem of the global effects of overproduction and resource use. Thus, moving beyond the object as the locus of meaning has a further relevance. Selection, presentation, and conversation are ways for human beings to create and exchange real value, without dependence on older, unsustainable processes. Curating can take the lead in pointing us toward this crucial importance of choosing.

Learning the art of operations and develop the fingertip feel for applying tactics during interplay between adversaries, you can see is crucial to our success. This interplay teaches us that interaction leads to maneuver and maneuver opens up opportunities to exploit weaknesses. Then through superior situational awareness and insights you develop innovative ideas as you accord with an adversary. This leads to well thought out and/or intuitive decisions and actions to meet our strategic goals, whatever those goals may be.

One of the major purposes of state simplifications, collectivization, assembly lines, plantations, and planned communities alike is to strip down reality to the bare bones so that the rules will in fact explain more of the situation and provide a better guide to behavior. To the extent that this simplification can be imposed, those who make the rules can actually supply crucial guidance and instruction. This, at any rate, is what I take to be the inner logic of social, economic, and productive de-skilling. If the environment can be simplified down to the point where the rules do explain a great deal, those who formulate the rules and techniques have also greatly expanded their power. They have, correspondingly, diminished the power of those who do not. To the degree that they do succeed, cultivators with a high degree of autonomy, skills, experience, self-confidence, and adaptability are replaced by cultivators following instructions. Such reduction in diversity, movement, and life, to recall Jacobs’s term, represents a kind of social “taxidermy.” The

When addressing particular life situations, it is crucial to keep in mind the healing and forgiving grace that God has offered to fallen human beings in Christ. This grace is the constant backdrop of all our reflections. Eternal salvation is not at stake in these situations. Salvation is a gift, already assured in Christ.

The opening of this letter is the easy part. Jesus praises the church for the positive things it is being and doing. The Lord repeats this pattern of opening each letter with encouraging words throughout this section of Scripture. Ironically, praise is crucial to recovery. It instills hope. Most men who struggle sexually have hidden their secret lives of sin for so long that they are hounded by a tremendous fear of being found out. If their fears come true, they may fall into a pit of despair. By contrast, it is the Lord’s nature to be gentle with his people, even when they are in sin. He truly is longsuffering. As the second chapter in Romans points out, “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” (2:4). By offering praise, Jesus gently affirms his love for them. He continued to John in Revelation, “Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols” (2:20). The Lord now transitions into the real issue. First, notice the use of the word tolerate. It appears this church knew what was going on but just looked the other way. Were the leaders merely putting up with open immorality? Not only that, but the woman somehow worked her way into a position of authority—a self-made leader. This situation isn’t unique to the first century. We see the same thing happening today. Many pastors refuse to believe that the men, women, and youth in their churches are viewing pornography and engaging in immoral sexual behaviors. Either they simply don’t want to believe it or they are trapped by the same problems and feel a lack of credibility to address those who are in the wrong. Today, the word tolerance is used as if it were a great virtue. I want to dispel this myth. No doubt God is patient, and we are all living proof of his patience. However, God is not tolerant in that he is consistent in what he does and doesn’t like in our behaviors and hearts. Otherwise Jesus would not have had to die for the sin of the world. The same things that upset him in Genesis upset him throughout Scripture. Remember, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).