Elephant Power Quotes

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. But it has one defect: It needs a driver. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.

Money, power, sex ... and elephants.

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.

I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would he impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.

You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas.

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon. Our government's got a war on drugs....But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal. One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal of time from when he was sixteen until he was forty. When he was forty-one, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint. Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

Wildlife, we are constantly told, would run loose across our towns and cities were it not for the sport hunters to control their population, as birds would blanket the skies without the culling services of Ducks Unlimited and other groups. Yet here they are breeding wild animals, year after year replenishing the stock, all for the sole purpose of selling and killing them, deer and bears and elephants so many products being readied for the market. Animals such as deer, we are told, have no predators in many areas, and therefore need systematic culling. Yet when attempts are made to reintroduce natural predators such as wolves and coyotes into these very areas, sport hunters themselves are the first to resist it. Weaker animals in the wild, we hear, will only die miserable deaths by starvation and exposure without sport hunters to control their population. Yet it's the bigger, stronger animals they're killing and wounding--the very opposite of natural selection--often with bows and pistols that only compound and prolong the victim's suffering.

The elephants we have seen taunted and tormented and slaughtered by the likes of Safari Club do not have time to wait while the world's ethicists work out some centuries-long paradigm shift in moral thought.

Men and women who had worn suits for decades traded punches powerful enough to crush elephant skulls, dodged and deflected attacks too fast for the eye to follow, and died suddenly, often before the crowd registered the killing blow. Victors and dead men were separated by a blink of the eye.

If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done.

Making wishes on the elephant is emotionally dangerous, because inevitably one's hopes rise abnormally high, unhealthily high, and when the wish does not come true, one's high hopes get crushed more painfully than if one had not asked for the help of supernatural powers. Therefore, one should always try to make the wish casually and forget about it instantly after making it, which is what I try to do now.

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.

For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the 'natives,' and so in every crisis he has got to do what the 'natives' expect of him... A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things.

A 22-year-old woman who spends six months backpacking across Asia sends a powerful message about her curiosity, open-mindedness, and even courage. Similar (if weaker) signals can be bought for less time and money simply by eating strange foods, watching foreign films, and reading widely.

Trans women are juvenile elephants. We are much stronger and more powerful than we understand. We are fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone forged from rage and trauma, armed with ivory spears and faces unique in nature, living in grasslands where any of the ubiquitous humans may or may not be a poacher. With our strength, we can destroy each other with ease. But we are a lost generation. We have no elders, no stable groups, no one to teach us to countenance pain. No matriarchs to tell the young girls to knock it off or show off their own long lives lived happily and well.

My heart aches for my people. I don’t understand why God gives more power to some and less to others.

All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.

just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable it will some day be larger than an elephant,—just as we know, when we see weeds and dandelions growing more and more thickly in a garden, that they must, in spite of all our efforts, grow taller than the chimney-pots and swallow the house from sight, so we know and reverently acknowledge, that when any power in human politics has shown for any period of time any considerable activity, it will go on until it reaches to the sky.

In the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom. As soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom, you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die, and how many are killed. But from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power of violence at once hidden and palpable … has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. Thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself. He kills to adorn himself, he kills in order to attack, and he kills in order to defend himself. He kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself. He kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

We must protect them (animals) and this land. If the animals die, this land dies. If this land dies, we die.

The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying.

Poetic Terrorism WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ... Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc. Go naked for a sign. Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty. Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement... The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails. PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now. An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE. Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you. Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.

Those of us who are in tune with nature and animals know it is our way of life, Bram. There is a connection to all living things, a vibration of Life. Animals were not given a power of choice. A lion does not try and eat legumes, nor an elephant meat. We believe the best way to communicate with nature, God, is through a liaison: the animals..... Nature hears one voice and obeys it. That is why ten or ten thousand birds may rise from the surface of a lake at the same time and yet never touch one another. Man only hears his own voice. He constantly bumps into another. Even his voice mirrors his erratic walk, jealousy, hate, ego, pride, lying, cheating. He makes his own judgements and falls prey to his greed. Remember, the moon is reflected on one drop of water as is the entire ocean-- so it is with God. He is reflected ins each living thing-- in a grain of sand as the entire shore, one star as the whole universe. Each animal as in all creatures. -Jagrat

When man chooses to develop his innate power of communication with nature and therefore hear the voice, all will be right with the world – we will be as one. What you have been able to do with your Modoc is what man has been seeking for a long time. To communicate with nature through animals.

That is the way of management from time immemorial, in medieval feudal states, communist dictatorships, and capitalist conference rooms alike. It is the way the powerful treat those less so, and it is the human condition.

Living in the bush teaches you that life is a magnificent cycle of birth and death, and nothing showed me that more powerfully than when Nana gave birth to a beautiful baby boy around the time of Lawrence’s passing. Of course I named him Lolo.

I wish I could be like everybody else in this neighborhood--your basic, normal, unaccomplished person-and go up to my bedroom, and lie down, and sleep. It's going to be a big day today, and I'd like to be ready for it. I wish I could sleep and wake up and find everything in my life different. Not necessarily just the big things,.... but things clearly within my power.

Yeah, yeah, you have the memory of an elephant. Or you’re so smart that you remember everything, right? WRONG. Not writing down your thoughts, ideas, tasks, etc, is stupid. Why? Because you’re wasting a lot of brain power when you rely on your memory. When you write everything down, you can use your brainpower for other things. Like solving problems. That’s actually useful and advances your career.

The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care for their young, how they go together to pasture, and how they draw one another to the spring. There is not one that conceals its overabundance of prey and lets its brother starve as a result. There is not one that tries to enforce its will on those of its own kind. Not a one mistakenly imagines that it is an elephant when it is a mosquito. The animal lives fittingly and true to the life of its species, neither exceeding nor falling short of it. He who never lives his animal must treat his brother like an animal. Abase yourself and live your animal so that you will be able to treat your brother correctly. You will thus redeem all those roaming dead who strive to feed on the living. And do not turn anything you do into a law, since that is the hubris of power.

We all know the old adage about why an elephant with all its power can be held in place by a small rope and peg. This is because elephants remember when they were babies and did not have the strength to pull the peg out of the ground. In short, elephants remain captive because their memories lie to them. They tell them that their past is their future—that what they experienced before will always be the reality that is before them.

They plunged into an enormous and eager conversation, first about books, then about shooting, in which the girl seemed to have an interest and about which she persuaded Flory to talk. She was quite thrilled when he described the murder of an elephant which he had perpetrated some years earlier.

This is not just primitive rural superstition; [juju] is practiced by all kinds of people, from illiterate herd boys to multi-dregreed university professors. If you don't understand the power of this belief, you will never truly grasp the rich albeit often incomprehensible spirituality of Africa.

Once you give your attention to the title Don’t Think of an Elephant, no matter how hard you try you cannot not think of an elephant. It is the same way with stories.

An elegant woman is like an elephant. She makes her presence felt.

A self-limiting belief is no stronger than the flimsy rope that tethers an elephant by its foot.

No one has the power to change what has been decided.

You become powerful when you can tap into both your rational brain and your emotional brain. The rider and the elephant need to work in harmony. And that’s where emotional intelligence comes into play.

And yet, when to act on that belief causes deep hurt to innocents who had nothing to do with the original wrong -- if there was one -- do we not have a greater responsibility to the present than to the past?

To change behavior, you’ve got to direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path. If you can do all three at once, dramatic change can happen even if you don’t have lots of power or resources behind you.

Alex is basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met. He uses his powers to inflame paranoia. He boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda. Alex eschews facts and reason and he definitely should not have political sway.

Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “he swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble.

There is a connection to all living things, a vibration of Life. Animals were not given a power of choice. A lion does not try to eat legumes nor an elephant meat. We believe the best way to communicate with nature, God, is through a liaison: the animals.

The first time I ever saw an elephant I was literally scared stiff. To think there could be a living creature as hard as a rock and as strong as a river, a creature whose nose was so nimble it could pick up nuts and yet powerful enough to whack over great trees

Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the state apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of game pieces, the relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a game of the State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game’s form of interiority. Go pieces, I contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function: “It” makes a move. “It” could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. Thus the relations are very different in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary’s pieces: their functioning is structural. One the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology. Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival. The “smooth” space of Go, as against the “striated” space of chess. The nomos of Go against the State of chess, nomos against polis. The difference is that chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go proceeds altogether differently, territorializing and deterritorializing it (make the outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the construction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorialize the enemy by shattering his territory from within; deterritorialize oneself by renouncing, by going elsewhere…) Another justice, another movement, another space-time.

The thesis of the book,” he writes in response, “when correctly interpreted, is essentially trivial. . . . To ‘prove’ such a mathematical result by a costly and prolonged numerical study of many kinds of business profit and expense ratios is analogous to proving the multiplication table by arranging elephants in rows and columns, and then doing the same for numerous other kinds of animals. The performance, though perhaps entertaining, and having a certain pedagogical value, is not an important contribution either to zoölogy or mathematics.

The first Embassy to Afghanistan by a western power left the Company's Delhi Residency on 13 October 1808, with the Ambassador accompanied by 200 calvary, 4,000 infantry, a dozen elephants and no fewer than 600 camels. It was dazzling, but it was also clear from this attempt to reach out to the Afghans that the British were not interested in cultivating Shah Shuja's friendship for its own sake, but were concerned only to outflank their imperial rivals: the Afghans were perceived as mere pawns on the chessboard of western diplomacy, to be engaged or sacrificed at will. It was a precedent that was to be followed many other times, by several different powers, over the years and decades to come; and each time the Afghans would show themselves capable of defending their inhospitable terrain far more effectively than any of their would-be manipulators could possibly have suspected.

Joan had told me a story once about some elephants in captivity somewhere, how as babies they were put into ankle cuffs with chains that were attached to spikes driven into the ground, which they couldn't pull out. They stopped trying within their first years, because it was frustrating and pointless, so they grew up believing that the spikes were stronger than they were. Apparently it never occurred to them to try again later when they were giant adult elephants perfectly capable of yanking the spikes out without even exerting much effort and running free into the jungle, so they wound up staying put next to these tiny little spikes that were now ridiculously weak in comparison to their powerful legs. Joan said we were like that, too. She said we humans often remained bound by old beliefs that had not real power aside from that which we placed upon them. She said our fears were the little tiny spikes we were sill seeing from the vantage point of the baby elephants, but now, my darling, she had told me, now we were mighty beasts who could uproot the spike any old time we were ready. (266)

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish it away.

No more peeping through keyholes! No more mas turbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I’m sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don’t want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible-it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, murder, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age. A classic purity, then-and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we and all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! That odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion’s dung, of tiger’s breath and elephant’s hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Rabelais rebuilds the walls of Paris with human cunts. Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human boneswhilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!

How important was mantra to Gandhi’s transformation? Extremely. When done systematically, mantra has a powerful effect on the brain. It gathers and focuses the energy of the mind. It teaches the mind to focus on one point, and it cultivates a steadiness that over time becomes an unshakable evenness of temper. The cultivation of this quality of “evenness” is a central principle of the Bhagavad Gita. It is called samatva in Sanskrit, and it is a central pillar of Krishna’s practice. When the mind develops steadiness, teaches Krishna, it is not shaken by fear or greed. So, in his early twenties, Gandhi had already begun to develop a still-point at the center of his consciousness—a still-point that could not be shaken. This little seed of inner stillness would grow into a mighty oak. Gandhi would become an immovable object. Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “he swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble.” “But the wise elephant trainer,” said Rambha, “will give the elephant a stick of bamboo to hold in his trunk. The elephant likes this. He holds it fast. And as soon as the elephant wraps his trunk around the bamboo, the trunk begins to settle. Now the elephant strides through the market like a prince: calm, collected, focused, serene. Bananas and coconuts no longer distract.” So too with the mind. As soon as the mind grabs hold of the mantra, it begins to settle. The mind holds the mantra gently, and it becomes focused, calm, centered. Gradually this mind becomes extremely concentrated. This is the beginning stage of meditation. All meditation traditions prescribe some beginning practice of gathering, focusing, and concentration—and in the yoga tradition this is most often achieved precisely through mantra. The whole of Chapter Six in the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to Krishna’s teachings on this practice: “Whenever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self,” instructs Krishna. “When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant ‘paying off of old scores’; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called—instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit—because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.

I tell myself that a quick stroll around the block is enough exercise, and I believe it. I tell myself that the mound of peanut butter on my sandwich is just a couple teaspoons, and I believe it. I tell myself that a cheat day is just a onetime thing, and I believe it. The worst lie I tell myself, and the most powerful one, is about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the golden day. That’s the day when I’ll quit overeating and start working out and set the course for a new version of myself.

The real problem here is a massive elephant in the room: our own culture. Our social values, our media - so influential on impressionable young girls - that have been allowed, for millenia, to send out this powerful, alienating message about girls and sport: that sport is unfeminine, that sport makes you sweaty and muscular, that sport is swearing and violence, that sport is ugliness in a world where women’s sole priority, value and focus should be beauty and becoming an object of desire.

Similarly at the Washington Post in 2005, one of the paper’s editors, Marie Arana, wrote “The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions. . . . We’re not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat.” She added, “I’ve been in communal gatherings in the Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats.

The Marquess screamed. All this time, she had been small and cowering, nothing like herself, a shadow of a shadow. But when Nod sunk his squarish teeth into her dark skin, she screamed and hissed—and then suddenly stood. She stared at the creature clamping down on her wrist. He shook his muzzle to get a better grip on her. Her spine straightened, and September saw her face settle into its old self, a face used to power, to getting her way, and never balking at any single thing. “How dare you,” the Marquess snarled. “How dare you put your teeth on me?” She clamped her hand down on his snout and tore him free of her flesh. Shadow-blood welled up and fell. The tip of his elephant-like nose stretched far longer than September would have thought possible. It sought and found her wound as she held him fast. She threw him aside like a doll; his weight shattered a crate stamped with Pluto’s Fancy Mushrooms. Dark soil spilled out. The Marquess reached down and opened the shadow of the box, her eyes blazing. She opened it as herself, as the Marquess in all her fury and beauty and terror.

The alt-right’s small gains in popularity will not be enough to win Trump the election. This is not Germany in the 1930s. All that’s changed is that one of Alex’s fans — one of those grumpy looking middle-aged men sitting in David Icke’s audience — is now the Republican nominee. But if some disaster unfolds — if Hillary’s health declines further, or she grows ever more off-puttingly secretive — and Trump gets elected, he could bring Alex and the others with him. The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying. THE

So now let’s address the elephant in the room: No real physical, chemical, or therapeutic mechanisms made these changes happen. None of these people had actual surgery, took active medication, or received any real treatment to create these significant alterations in health. The power of their minds so influenced their bodies’ physiology that they became healed. It’s safe to say that their real transformation happened independent of their conscious minds. Their conscious minds may have initiated the course of action, but the real work happened subconsciously, with the subjects remaining totally unaware of how it happened.

Basically, live foods are those that are created through the natural interaction of the sun, air, soil and water. What I’m talking about here is a vegetarian diet. Fill your plate with fresh vegetables, fruits and grains and you might just live forever.” “Is that possible?” “Most of the sages were well over one hundred and they showed no signs of slowing down, and just last week I read in the paper about a group of people living on the tiny island of Okinawa in the East China Sea. Researchers are flocking to the island because they are fascinated by the fact that it holds the largest concentration of centenarians in the world.” “What have they learned?” “That a vegetarian diet is one of their main longevity secrets.” “But is this type of diet healthy? You wouldn’t think that it would give you much strength. Remember, I’m still a busy litigator, Julian.” “This is the diet that nature intended. It is alive, vital and supremely healthy. The sages have lived by this diet for many thousands of years. They call it a sattvic, or pure diet. And as to your concern about strength, the most powerful animals on the planet, ranging from gorillas to elephants, wear the badge of proud vegetarians. Did you know that a gorilla has about thirty times the strength of a man?

but does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders28 of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human.29 O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. he then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname30 was.

Entering the office, Evie found Sebastian and Cam on opposite sides of the desk. They both mulled over account ledgers, scratching out some entries with freshly inked pens, and making notations beside the long columns. Both men looked up as she crossed the threshold. Evie met Sebastian’s gaze only briefly; she found it hard to maintain her composure around him after the intimacy of the previous night. He paused in mid-sentence as he stared at her, seeming to forget what he had been saying to Cam. It seemed that neither of them was yet comfortable with feelings that were still too new and powerful. Murmuring good morning to them both, she bid them to remain seated, and she went to stand beside Sebastian’s chair. “Have you breakfasted yet, my lord?” she asked. Sebastian shook his head, a smile glinting in his eyes. “Not yet.” “I’ll go to the kitchen and see what is to be had.” “Stay a moment,” he urged. “We’re almost finished.” As the two men discussed a few last points of business, which pertained to a potential investment in a proposed shopping bazaar to be constructed on St. James Street, Sebastian picked up Evie’s hand, which was resting on the desk. Absently he drew the backs of her fingers against the edge of his jaw and his ear while contemplating the written proposal on the desk before him. Although Sebastian was not aware of what the casual familiarity of the gesture revealed, Evie felt her color rise as she met Cam’s gaze over her husband’s downbent head. The boy sent her a glance of mock reproof, like that of a nursemaid who had caught two children playing a kissing game, and he grinned as her blush heightened further. Oblivious to the byplay, Sebastian handed the proposal to Cam, who sobered instantly. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Sebastian commented. “It’s doubtful there will be enough business in the area to sustain an entire bazaar, especially at those rents. I suspect within a year it will turn into a white elephant.” “White elephant?” Evie asked. A new voice came from the doorway, belonging to Lord Westcliff. “A white elephant is a rare animal,” the earl replied, smiling, “that is not only expensive but difficult to maintain. Historically, when an ancient king wished to ruin someone he would gift him with a white elephant.” Stepping into the office, Westcliff bowed over Evie’s hand and spoke to Sebastian. “Your assessment of the proposed bazaar is correct, in my opinion. I was approached with the same investment opportunity not long ago, and I rejected it on the same grounds.” “No doubt we’ll both be proven wrong,” Sebastian said wryly. “One should never try to predict anything regarding women and their shopping.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things— the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

A moment of truth here: If you continue to eat processed foods full of sugar and fat, you won’t lose weight. But you knew that. And that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to discover how good you’ll feel on a diet of vegetarian proteins, whole grains, and all the glorious and diverse vegetables and fruits of the earth. If you look around, you won’t see many fat vegans. Vegans tend to be slim and strong, gorgeous and glowing, and that’s because a healthy, plant-based diet creates vitality and vigor— and weight loss simply happens as a result of not eating fatty animal protein. And lest you think a plant-based diet is for weaklings, consider bulls, elephants, gorillas, orangutans, and stallions. These plant eaters are pure lean and powerful muscle.

Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the material must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject; and in power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife’s edge. We’re a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there’s a dial tone, and your front yard isn’t underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there’s no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating.

Have no fear!” Silver shouted, leaping onto a convenient table, bestriding a centerpiece of oysters. “The powers of my kind shall scourge these creatures back into the slime from which they crawled—” Amazing grammar in a crisis, Irene couldn’t help noticing. “Behold!” Silver raised his hand. Fire flared round his fingers dramatically, then leapt to strike the alligators in burning orange whips. It fizzled. There was no other word for it. The flames drooped and went out as if they’d been doused with cold water, leaving the alligators to rumble forward undeterred. “Damnation!” Silver swore. “They have been armored in cold iron! Johnson! My elephant gun!” Much as Irene would have enjoyed watching whatever happened next, fleeing the room before she was trampled by the crowd or eaten by alligators seemed a better idea.

On a hike in East Africa 2 million years ago, you might well have encountered a familiar cast of human characters: anxious mothers cuddling their babies and clutches of carefree children playing in the mud; temperamental youths chafing against the dictates of society and weary elders who just wanted to be left in peace; chest-thumping machos trying to impress the local beauty and wise old matriarchs who had already seen it all. These archaic humans loved, played, formed close friendships and competed for status and power – but so did chimpanzees, baboons and elephants. There was nothing special about humans. Nobody, least of all humans themselves, had any inkling that their descendants would one day walk on the moon, split the atom, fathom the genetic code and write history books. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.

It’s a girl!” Cecelia cried. The elephant evaporated, the squeezing stopped, and Julia was herself again. Mostly herself, anyway. She realized that she was most certainly a mammal and had the ability to shake the world apart and create a human when she unleashed her power. She was a mother. This identity shuddered through her, welcome like water to a dry riverbed. It felt so elemental and true that Julia must have unknowingly been a mother all along, simply waiting to be joined by her child. Julia had never felt like this before. Her brain was a gleaming engine, and her resources felt immense. She was clarity. Julia held the baby for what felt like only a few seconds before the nurse whisked the infant to the nursery to be washed and wrapped in a blanket. Cecelia left the room to tell the others the news. Julia shook her head, in disbelief and joy. She couldn’t believe how fast her mind was moving, but perhaps these truths had been inside her all along and were accessible now because she’d given birth. She saw everything so clearly.

FOR A WOMAN WHO FEARS SHE IS TOO DAMAGED TO LOVE AGAIN A Prayer adapted from the Heart and Soul of Sex by Gina Ogden, PhD. Holy Spirits of Fire befriend and warm me. Earth and Water wrap me in bounty. Spirits of Air guide me to walk the paths of my heart. Sun smile on me. Stones accept me. Stars remind me. Ocean storms burnish my terrors to translucent pearls. Creatures of hills and hollows, beings beneath the ground watch over me, comfort and nourish me. Snakes and rivers, ancient dragons, dance sinuously with me. Swirling spirit of volcano invest me with power. Eagle and sparrow give me wings and sight. Snails of Buddha, saints of God, Great Spirit, Yahweh, Magus, Shiva, Isis, Astarte of the flowing heart, Goddess of Grain, Angel of Sweetness, Higher Power, protect me, fearful, angry, and armored; as I am the giver, healer, striver, survivor and lover. Cherish me—waif and victim, elf and Amazon. See me a holy woman now. Touch me. Brush me with the breath of love. Ganesh, sacred elephant who cries human tears and oversees new ventures, help me begin again.

On that fateful morning in April 1986, the explosion that blew off the reactor lid also dislodged special serpentine sand and concrete from within the thick walls surrounding the RBMK. In that same moment, a powerful shock wave forced the entire bottom half of the core assembly - including the lower biological shield - downward by several meters, into the space below. Over the following week, intense heat from the fire and radioactive decay increased until it reached temperatures sufficient to melt the fuel assembly, which poured out and bonded with the sand/concrete mix to form a kind of radioactive lava called corium. This lava then oozed through pipes, ducts and cracks in the damaged structure to the rooms beneath. The Elephant’s Foot was one offshoot of this lava, which had cooled into a glassy form. Melted fuel vacating the exposed reactor like this is probably what caused the sudden drop in temperature and emission levels in early May, 1986. A molten core is capable of burning through 30cm of concrete within hours, hence the scramble to prevent this from happening.246

Other animals may also imagine various things. A cat waiting to ambush a mouse might not see the mouse, but may well imagine the shape and even taste of the mouse. Yet to the best of our knowledge, cats are able to imagine only things that actually exist in the world, like mice. They cannot imagine things that they have never seen or smelled or tasted – such as the US dollar, the Google corporation or the European Union. Only Sapiens can imagine such chimeras. Consequently, whereas cats and other animals are confined to the objective realm and use their communication systems merely to describe reality, Sapiens use language to create completely new realities. During the last 70,000 years the intersubjective realities that Sapiens invented became ever more powerful, so that today they dominate the world. Will the chimpanzees, the elephants, the Amazon rainforests and the Arctic glaciers survive the twenty-first century? This depends on the wishes and decisions of intersubjective entities such as the European Union and the World Bank; entities that exist only in our shared imagination. No

Ames, having explained the condition of juvenile elephants, drew this metaphor: Trans women are juvenile elephants. We are much stronger and more powerful than we understand. We are fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone forged from rage and trauma, armed with ivory spears and faces unique in nature, living in grasslands where any of the ubiquitous humans may or may not be a poacher. With our strength, we can destroy each other with ease. But we are a lost generation. We have no elders, no stable groups, no one to teach us to countenance pain. No matriarchs to tell the young girls to knock it off or show off their own long lives lived happily and well. Those older generations of trans women died of HIV, poverty, suicide, repression, or disappeared to pathologized medicalization and stealth lives - and that's if they were lucky enough to be white. They left behind only scattered exhausted voices to tell the angry lost young when and how the pain might end - to tell us what will be lost when we lash out with our considerable strength, or use the fragile shards of what remain of our social networks to ostracize, punish, and retaliate against those who behave in a traumatized manner. "And so we become what we have seen. How could we know not to? Have you seen many orphaned juvenile elephants behaving otherwise?

[Magyar] had an intense dislike for terms like 'illiberal,' which focused on traits the regimes did not possess--like free media or fair elections. This he likened to trying to describe an elephant by saying that the elephant cannot fly or cannot swim--it says nothing about what the elephant actually is. Nor did he like the term 'hybrid regime,' which to him seemed like an imitation of a definition, since it failed to define what the regime was ostensibly a hybrid of. Magyar developed his own concept: the 'post-communist mafia state.' Both halves of the designation were significant: 'post-communist' because "the conditions preceding the democratic big bang have a decisive role in the formation of the system. Namely that it came about on the foundations of a communist dictatorship, as a product of the debris left by its decay." (quoting Balint Magyar) The ruling elites of post-communist states most often hail from the old nomenklatura, be it Party or secret service. But to Magyar this was not the countries' most important common feature: what mattered most was that some of these old groups evolved into structures centered around a single man who led them in wielding power. Consolidating power and resources was relatively simple because these countries had just recently had Party monopoly on power and a state monopoly on property.

The whole of his life was only one long protest against his lack of importance: that, I’m sure, was what drove him to kill so many magnificent animals — some of the finest and most powerful in creation. One day, I won the confidence of a writer who comes regularly to Africa to kill his ration of elephants, lions and rhino. I had asked him where he got this need and he had had enough to drink to make him sincere: ‘All my life I’ve been half-dead with fear. Fear of living, fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of becoming impotent, fear of the inevitable physical decline. When it becomes intolerable, I come to Africa, and all my dread, all my fear, is concentrated on the charging rhino, on the lion rising slowly in front of me out of the grass, on the elephant that swerves in my direction. Then at last my dread becomes something tangible, something I can kill. I shoot, and for a while I’m delivered, I have complete peace, the animal has taken away with him in his sudden death all my accumulated terrors — for a few hours I’m rid of them. At the end of six weeks it amounts to a real cure.’ I’m sure there was something of that in Orsini — but above all, there was a violent protest against the smallness and impotence of being a man, the smallness and impotence of being Orsini. He had to kill a lot of elephants and lions to compensate for that.

Until now I had conceived of sleep as a kind of model for death. I had imagined death as an extension of sleep. A far deeper sleep than ordinary sleep. A sleep devoid of all consciousness. Eternal rest. A total blackout. But now I wondered if I had been wrong. Perhaps death was a state entirely unlike sleep, something that belonged to a different category altogether―like the deep, endless, wakeful darkness I was seeing now. No, that would be too terrible. If the state of death was not to be a rest for us, then what was going to redeem this imperfect life of ours, so fraught with exhaustion? Finally, though, no one knows what death is. Who has ever truly seen it? No one. Except the ones who are dead. No one living knows what death is like. They can only guess. And the best guess is still a guess. Maybe death is a kind of rest, but reasoning can’t tell us that. The only way to find out what death is is to die. Death can be anything at all. An intense terror overwhelmed me at the thought. A stiffening chill ran down my spine. My eyes were still shut tight. I had lost the power to open them. I stared at the thick darkness that stood planted in front of me, a darkness as deep and hopeless as the universe itself. I was all alone. My mind was in deep concentration, and expanding. If I had wanted to, I could have seen into the uttermost depths of the universe. But I decided not to look. It was too soon for that.

All aboard," the Sicilian said. (This was before trains, but the expression comes originally from carpenters loading lumber, and this was well after carpenters.) With that the Turk began to climb. It was at least a thousand feet and he was carrying the three, but he was not worried. When it came to power, nothing worried him. When it came to reading, he got knots in the middle of his stomach, and when it came to writing, he broke out in a cold sweat, and when addition was mentioned or, worse, long division, he always changed the subject right away. But strength had never been his enemy. He could take the kick of a horse on his chest and not fall backward. He could take a hundred-pound flour sack between his legs and scissor it open without thinking. He had once held an elephant aloft using only the muscles in his back. But his real might lay in his arms. There had never, not in a thousand years, been arms to match Fezzik's. (For that was his name.) The arms were not only Gargantuan and totally obedient and surprisingly quick, but they were also, and this is why he never worried, tireless. If you gave him an ax and told him to chop down a forest, his legs might give out from having to support so much weight for so long, or the ax might shatter from the punishment of killing so many trees, but Fezzik's arms would be as fresh tomorrow as today. And so, even with the Sicilian on his neck and the Princess around his shoulders and the Spaniard at his waist, Fezzik did not feel in the least bit put upon. He was actually quite happy, because it was only when he was requested to use his might that he felt he wasn't a bother to everybody.

Reverend Mahakasyapa, the Maras who play the devil in the innumerable universes of the ten directions are all Bodhisattvas dwelling in the inconcievable liberation, who are playing the devil in order to develop living beings through their skill in liberative technique. Reverend Mahakasyapa, all the miserable beggars who come to the Bodhisattvas of the innumerable universes of the ten directions to ask for a hand, a foot, an ear, a nose, some blood, muscles, bones, marrow, an eye, a torso, a head, a limb, a member, a throne, a kingdom, a country, a wife, a son, a daughter, s slave, a slave-girl, a horse, an elephent, a chariot, a cart, gold, silver, jewels, pearls, conches, crystal, coral, beryl, treasures, food, drink, elixers, amd clothes -- these demanding beggars are usually Bodhisattvas living in the inconcievable liberation who, through their skill in liberative technique, wish to test and thus demonstrate the firmness of the high resolve of the Bodhisattvas. Why? Reverend Mahakasyapa, the Bodhisattvas demonstrate that firmness by means of terrible austerities. Ordinary beings have no power to be this demanding of Bodhisattvas, unless they are granted the oppurtunity. They are not capable of killing and depriving in that manner without being freeluy given the chance. Reverend Mahakasyapa, just as a glowworm cannot eclipse the light of the sun, so Reverend Mahakasyapa, it is not possible without special allowance that an ordinary person can thus attack and deprive a Bodhisattva. Reverend Mahakasyapa, just as a donkey could not muster an attack on a wild elephant, even so, Reverend Mahakasyapa, one who is not himself a Bodhisattva cannot harass a Bodhisattva. Only one who is himself a Bodhisattva can harass another Bodhisattva, and only a Bodhisattva can tolerate the harassment of another Bodhisattva.....

The Buddha, too, goes into the forest and has conferences there with the leading gurus of his day. Then he goes past them and, after a season of trials and search, comes to the bo tree, the tree of illumination, where he, likewise, undergoes three temptations. The first is of lust, the second of fear, and the third of submission to public opinion, doing as told. In the first temptation, the Lord of Lust displayed his three beautiful daughters before the Buddha. Their names were Desire, Fulfillment, and Regrets - Future, Present, and Past. But the Buddha, who had already disengaged himself from attachment to his sensual character, was not moved. Then the Lord of Lust turned himself into the Lord of Death and flung at the Buddha all the weapons of an army of monsters. But the Buddha had found himself that still point within, which is of eternity, untouched by time. So again, he was not moved, and the weapons flung at him turned into flowers of worship. Finally the Lord of Lust and Death transformed himself into the Lord of Social Duty and argued, "Young man, haven't you read the morning papers? Don't you know what there is to be done today?" The Buddha responded by simply touching the earth with the tips of the fingers of his right hand. Then the voice of the goddess mother of the universe was heard, like thunder rolling on the horizon, saying, "This, my beloved son, has already so given of himself to the world that there is no one here to be ordered about. Give up this nonsense." Whereupon the elephant on which the Lord of Social Duty was riding bowed in worship of the Buddha, and the entire company of the Antagonist dissolved like a dream. That night, the Buddha achieved illumination, and for the next fifty years remained in the world as teacher of the way to the extinction of the bondages of egoism. p171-2

[Magyar] had an intense dislike for terms like 'illiberal,' which focused on traits the regimes did not possess--like free media or fair elections. This he likened to trying to describe an elephant by saying that the elephant cannot fly or cannot swim--it says nothing about what the elephant actually is. Nor did he like the term 'hybrid regime,' which to him seemed like an imitation of a definition, since it failed to define what the regime was ostensibly a hybrid of. Magyar developed his own concept: the 'post-communist mafia state.' Both halves of the designation were significant: 'post-communist' because "the conditions preceding the democratic big bang have a decisive role in the formation of the system. Namely that it came about on the foundations of a communist dictatorship, as a product of the debris left by its decay." (quoting Balint Magyar) The ruling elites of post-communist states most often hail from the old nomenklatura, be it Party or secret service. But to Magyar this was not the countries' most important common feature: what mattered most was that some of these old groups evolved into structures centered around a single man who led them in wielding power. Consolidating power and resources was relatively simple because these countries had just recently had Party monopoly on power and a state monopoly on property. ... A mafia state, in Magyar's definition, was different from other states ruled by one person surrounded by a small elite. In a mafia state, the small powerful group was structured just like a family. The center of the family is the patriarch, who does not govern: "he disposes--of positions, wealth, statuses, persons." The system works like a caricature of the Communist distribution economy. The patriarch and his family have only two goals: accumulating wealth and concentrating power. The family-like structure is strictly hierarchical, and membership in it can be obtained only through birth or adoption. In Putin's case, his inner circle consisted of men with whom he grew up in the streets and judo clubs of Leningrad, the next circle included men with whom he had worked with in the KGB/FSB, and the next circle was made up of men who had worked in the St. Petersburg administration with him. Very rarely, he 'adopted' someone into the family as he did with Kholmanskikh, the head of the assembly shop, who was elevated from obscurity to a sort of third-cousin-hood. One cannot leave the family voluntarily: one can only be kicked out, disowned and disinherited. Violence and ideology, the pillars of the totalitarian state, became, in the hands of the mafia state, mere instruments. The post-communist mafia state, in Magyar's words, is an "ideology-applying regime" (while a totalitarian regime is 'ideology-driven'). A crackdown required both force and ideology. While the instruments of force---the riot police, the interior troops, and even the street-washing machines---were within arm's reach, ready to be used, ideology was less apparently available. Up until spring 2012, Putin's ideological repertoire had consisted of the word 'stability,' a lament for the loss of the Soviet empire, a steady but barely articulated restoration of the Soviet aesthetic and the myth of the Great Patriotic War, and general statements about the United States and NATO, which had cheated Russia and threatened it now. All these components had been employed during the 'preventative counter-revolution,' when the country, and especially its youth, was called upon to battle the American-inspired orange menace, which threatened stability. Putin employed the same set of images when he first responded to the protests in December. But Dugin was now arguing that this was not enough. At the end of December, Dugin published an article in which he predicted the fall of Putin if he continued to ignore the importance of ideas and history.

[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void. Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin." Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget. Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love." Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands. The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love. The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva. The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.

In opting for large scale, Korean state planners got much of what they bargained for. Korean companies today compete globally with the Americans and Japanese in highly capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, aerospace, consumer electronics, and automobiles, where they are far ahead of most Taiwanese or Hong Kong companies. Unlike Southeast Asia, the Koreans have moved into these sectors not primarily through joint ventures where the foreign partner has provided a turnkey assembly plant but through their own indigenous organizations. So successful have the Koreans been that many Japanese companies feel relentlessly dogged by Korean competitors in areas like semiconductors and steel. The chief advantage that large-scale chaebol organizations would appear to provide is the ability of the group to enter new industries and to ramp up to efficient production quickly through the exploitation of economies of scope.70 Does this mean, then, that cultural factors like social capital and spontaneous sociability are not, in the end, all that important, since a state can intervene to fill the gap left by culture? The answer is no, for several reasons. In the first place, not every state is culturally competent to run as effective an industrial policy as Korea is. The massive subsidies and benefits handed out to Korean corporations over the years could instead have led to enormous abuse, corruption, and misallocation of investment funds. Had President Park and his economic bureaucrats been subject to political pressures to do what was expedient rather than what they believed was economically beneficial, if they had not been as export oriented, or if they had simply been more consumption oriented and corrupt, Korea today would probably look much more like the Philippines. The Korean economic and political scene was in fact closer to that of the Philippines under Syngman Rhee in the 1950s. Park Chung Hee, for all his faults, led a disciplined and spartan personal lifestyle and had a clear vision of where he wanted the country to go economically. He played favorites and tolerated a considerable degree of corruption, but all within reasonable bounds by the standards of other developing countries. He did not waste money personally and kept the business elite from putting their resources into Swiss villas and long vacations on the Riviera.71 Park was a dictator who established a nasty authoritarian political system, but as an economic leader he did much better. The same power over the economy in different hands could have led to disaster. There are other economic drawbacks to state promotion of large-scale industry. The most common critique made by market-oriented economists is that because the investment was government rather than market driven, South Korea has acquired a series of white elephant industries such as shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and heavy manufacturing. In an age that rewards downsizing and nimbleness, the Koreans have created a series of centralized and inflexible corporations that will gradually lose their low-wage competitive edge. Some cite Taiwan’s somewhat higher overall rate of economic growth in the postwar period as evidence of the superior efficiency of a smaller, more competitive industrial structure.

Permanent Revolution THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OPENED up new ways to convert energy and to produce goods, largely liberating humankind from its dependence on the surrounding ecosystem. Humans cut down forests, drained swamps, dammed rivers, flooded plains, laid down hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad tracks, and built skyscraping metropolises. As the world was moulded to fit the needs of Homo sapiens, habitats were destroyed and species went extinct. Our once green and blue planet is becoming a concrete and plastic shopping centre. Today, the earth’s continents are home to billions of Sapiens. If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens – and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons. Our children’s books, our iconography and our TV screens are still full of giraffes, wolves and chimpanzees, but the real world has very few of them left. There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world, compared to 1.5 billion cattle; only 200,000 wolves, compared to 400 million domesticated dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees – in contrast to billions of humans. Humankind really has taken over the world.1 Ecological degradation is not the same as resource scarcity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the resources available to humankind are constantly increasing, and are likely to continue to do so. That’s why doomsday prophesies of resource scarcity are probably misplaced. In contrast, the fear of ecological degradation is only too well founded. The future may see Sapiens gaining control of a cornucopia of new materials and energy sources, while simultaneously destroying what remains of the natural habitat and driving most other species to extinction. In fact, ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiralling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects. These are likely to be controllable only by even more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, which would result in even worse chaos. Many call this process ‘the destruction of nature’. But it’s not really destruction, it’s change. Nature cannot be destroyed. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid. Still, the rumours of our own extinction are premature. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world’s human population has burgeoned as never before. In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens.

Prayer is spiritually nuclear in nature; it is the raw material of God and His people. Prayer is out of Satan’s influence. He has no power to warp or influence a prayer’s trajectory to God’s throne after it has been prayed.

During our meetings in Peshawar, Abdul Haq...asked me why the United States does not pay attention to terrorism. He compared America to a huge elephant: "One hundred people push on it and it doesn't blink, but when it decides to move, it lumbers forward and crushes everything.

It is easy to scoff at "native superstition" from the back of an elephant with a powerful rifle in your hand.

Let’s wrap up the protein question with one thought to ponder. Some of the strongest and most fierce animals in the world are PlantPowered. The elephant, rhino, hippo, and gorilla have one thing in common—they all get 100 percent of their protein from plants.

The progress of Asia’s two giants, China and India, can be neatly encapsulated by the imagery used to portray them. China is usually characterized as a dragon, aggressive and slightly frightening. India, on the other hand, is often described as an elephant—big and powerful, but also lumbering and slightly ungainly.

The megamachine is an elephant that fears even the smallest mouse.

I don’t think I can find an elephant head in time to make him my little Ganesha. Parvati had divine powers to join the head with her son’s body whereas I will have to plonk an orange pumpkin on top of his torso and try my luck with spit and good old Fevicol.

For instance, the development of the power of my thoughts had been brought to such a level that by only a few hours of self-preparation I could from a distance of tens of miles kill a yak; or, in twenty-four hours, could accumulate life forces of such compactness that I could in five minutes put to sleep an elephant.

I tell you now, better to spit it all out, cry a hundred days over this matter, an entire year, than ruin your life over it. You must acknowledge it now, so that it has no power over you. I do not assume to know what you are going through, but I do know something about hate.

Take responsibility for your own world and never project blame. If you do you lose your power.

But in having power, or the illusion of power, i was blessed with the knowledge of it. I saw the view from the top. In capitalism, the normal people think the special people are free because they can control people, and the special think the normals are free because there's no pressure. What I learned is that too far over the top edge is madness or evil: Max swimming toward his death, Parker jumping off the roof, Lucky Mike raping a little girl. But too far over the bottom edge is destitution and isolation: the man with the elephant trunk for a forehead, the breastfeeding women crying "help me" from the doorways in Phnom Penh, Rocky Balboa cut in half by a power-mad tourist. The two poles are related. The calamities I saw were not separate from the freedom of the special people, they were the result of their freedom. Lucky Mike's ultimate freedom depended on the ultimate slavery of another. Those at the top are not free either, because their freedom is tied inexorably to the sacrifice of those at the bottom.

Yesterday you spoke of power as if it were a good thing. You said you wished we had some kind of magic that could rid us of the Japanese soldiers. I have never seen it used for good. Think of the Japanese soldiers with all their power. It has eroded their hearts and their souls.

Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant. He replied, “I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant.

International politics is not unlike the jungle: smaller and weaker animals require acute intelligence, sensitive antennae, and nimbleness of footing to assure their own self-preservation; the strong—such as elephants—need pay less attention to ambient conditions and can often do as they wish, and others will get out of the way. Power also brings a certain arrogance: the belief that we can control the situation, we are in charge, we can persuade or intimidate with ease—or so we think.

An elegant woman is like an elephant, she makes her presence felt.

Elephants need half as much sleep as humans, requiring just four hours of slumber each day. Tigers and lions devour fifteen hours of daily sleep. The brown bat outperforms all other mammals, being awake for just five hours each day while sleeping nineteen hours. Total amount of time is one of the most conspicuous differences in how organisms sleep.

It's a novel by Jules Verne," she continued. "He writes for young readers, but adults enjoy his work as well." "What's it about?" "An Englishman who accepts a wager to go around the world in eighty days. He travels by train, ships, horse, elephant, and even a wind-powered sledge." Mr. Severin's perplexed gaze met hers. "Why read an entire novel about that when you could obtain the itinerary from a travel office?" She smiled at that. "The novel isn't about the itinerary. What's important is what he learns along the way." "Which is?" "Read it," she challenged, "and find out.