Emerge Stronger Quotes

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.

It is because good is always stronger than evil. Always remember that, Antonio. The smallest bit of good can stand against all the powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant.

It’s lonely,” she replied. “But a good kind of lonely. The kind that makes you stronger. I lived a solitary life here for years. That is how I’ve emerged as I am now. All great faiths are born in the desert.

We needed to be able to stand alone before we could stand together, and I'm so thankful that we made it through the darkness, the fighting, the pain, and emerged hand in hand, stronger than ever.

Sometimes God wills for one of his children to experience human wickedness so that he will emerge stronger and nobler than ever.

Meeting smaller emergencies and learning to deal with them had given me the confidence to deal with this larger emergency. So, little by little, I found out how to do things. After each catastrophe you don’t worry so much the next time, and each time you emerge stronger from your victory.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out.

Well. Who wouldn't break? I broke. You broke.' 'And we both emerged stronger.' 'We both emerged', I modified his words.

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. This we have done in full measure, ironic though it seems. We have both known fear, and loneliness, and very great distress. I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.

After a tragic incident you never remain the same. You pick up the pieces and emerge as a stronger, better version of yourself.

As she starts the car, I put my feet up on the dash. Two girls from opposite sides of the earth, emerging from the ashes, stronger.

Good is always stronger than evil. Always remember that...The smallest bit of good can stand against the powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant.

Girls come like a breeze and leave like a tornado. But we emerge stronger and wiser.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

A woman's life, always changing, accommodating, then shedding, old duties for new; one person's expectations for another until finally, victoriously, emerging stronger. Complete.

You cannot even touch my soul. So I have emerged stronger, Kinder, perceptive, forgiving To embrace you with all the humility.

Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes about in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

... things such as losing a job, the death of a loved one, divorce, bankruptcy, illness. Once you have handled any of those things, you emerge a much stronger person.

Change gives you the courage to look at your past without any regrets. Change says your past made you stronger and wiser and is getting you ready to emerge from hibernation. It is preparing you to never comprise your self-worth and to take everything at face value. Take a breather. Don’t underestimate your ability to create your own happiness. Your journey starts when you begin to love (Y.O.U.) Yourself. Over. Unhappiness.

When iron and carbon come together, there emerges steel! To be something stronger and better, you must mostly unite with something else and melt in something else!

Failing should be mandatory in life, but life is so wonderful that failing IS in fact mandatory in life!. Failure makes our heart beat faster and sheds light on our reasoning, it makes us feel alive, puts us to the test, and potentiates us... after making it through failure, we emerge bigger, stronger, better.

As you become more rooted inside -- as you drink from this silent stream of life that runs beneath the surface of everything -- as you live from that depth of your own being more and more, then you’ll be able to rise taller and stronger in this world; more than you may have ever thought possible.

Then I understood that a survivor has no right to bring a complaint. Whoever survives has won his case, he has no right and no cause to bring charges; he has emerged the stronger, the more cunning, the more obstinate, from the struggle.

Arinaas’s flame might char my skin and break my bones, but in the end I would emerge remade, newer and stronger and a version of myself no one could snuff out. I’d prayed for a sign, for hope, for a purpose in being sent to the Ziyaana.

Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?

Those who know how to transform a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled will be able to enjoy themselves, and emerge stronger from the ordeal.

A crisis is a great teacher. So, learn to love your crisis. Going through it with acceptance, and a seeking spirit, you will emerge stronger, wiser and happy!

The old woman who farms in the Alps, the welder in South Chicago, and the mythical cook from ancient China have this in common: their work is hard and unglamorous, and most people would find it boring, repetitive, and meaningless. Yet these individuals transformed the jobs they had to do into complex activities. They did this by recognizing opportunities for action where others did not, by developing skills, by focusing on the activity at hand, and allowing themselves to be lost in the interaction so that their selves could emerge stronger afterward.

As psychologist Susan Weinschenk explained,[52] ‘dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search’. Yet ‘the dopamine system is stronger than the opioid system. We seek more than we are satisfied. ... Seeking is more likely to keep us alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor.

One should never forget the main aim in a debate, inside and outside the organisations, in political rallies, in Parliament and other government structures, is that we should emerge from that debate, however sharp our differences might have been, stronger, closer and more united and confident that ever before.

Seneca had an extreme trick for practising amor fati. He was asthmatic, and attacks brought him almost to the point of suffocation. He often felt that he was about to die, but he learned to use each attack as a philosophical opportunity. While his throat closed and his lungs strained for breath, he tried to embrace what was happening to him: to say “yes” to it. I will this, he would think; and, if necessary, I will myself to die from it. When the attack receded, he emerged feeling stronger, for he had done battle with fear and defeated it.

When you feel negative, down, pensive, angry, sad, jealous and so forth, being mindful helps you emerge stronger than your negative emotions. It takes away the resistance and force from the negative emotions and you immediately feel better.

Some gemstones are created from the crush of time. Buried deep in the bedrock, they grow stronger to resist the temptation to turn to dust under the weight. When they finally emerge, they are as strong as they are beautiful. You are such a gem, I should think. Your best magic isn’t going to be in the books, Miss Finley. Your magic will write the books to come.

ahead. The way out.” His deep, melodious voice crafted words of air and sound that landed gently on my chest, seeping into my bones. “But there is the Twice Born man, Weston,” he said, his hand tightening on mine. “The man who walks into the dark forest of his life and suffers. Sometimes unimaginably. The way back is forever closed to him, but the Twice Born man walks forward. The path becomes more twisted, the hardships seemingly impossible to overcome. But he keeps going until one day, the shadows lift. The branches cease to scratch at his skin and they part for him. He’ll regard the scars with pride as he emerges from the forest reborn. Stronger for what he has endured. Wiser. Transformed. And grateful for the lessons he learned.

Why are some people weakened by stress, while others gain strength from it? Basically the answer is simple: those who know how to transform a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled will be able to enjoy themselves, and emerge stronger from the ordeal.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

One factor that makes human being reluctant to have hope is the fear of disappointment. Do not be afraid of disappointment! The more you afraid of it, the smaller your expectation. Face and overcome the disappointment, even though it felt bitter in soul and pain in body. If you go through and pass it, then your soul and body will be stronger than previous level. When hope emerged, change will occur because of that, both in your soul and in your body. Fear of disapointment is a main enemy of good hope and great change within the human being. Only by facing and overcoming the fear of disapointment, man will become stronger and wiser. ~ Salah satu faktor yang membuat manusia enggan untuk berharap adalah rasa takut akan kecewa. Jangan takut dengan kekecewaan! Semakin engkau takut menghadapinya, semakin kecil pengharapanmu. Hadapi dan lawanlah rasa kecewa, meskipun terasa pahit di jiwa dan terasa sakit di tubuh. Jika engkau mampu dan lulus, maka jiwa dan tubuhmu akan lebih kuat dari kondisi sebelumnya. Ketika harapan muncul, perubahan akan terjadi, baik dalam jiwa maupun dalam tubuh manusia. Rasa takut akan kecewa adalah musuh utama pengharapan yang baik dan perubahan yang agung dalam diri manusia. Hanya dengan menghadapi dan melalui rasa takut akan kecewa, seseorang dapat menjadi lebih kuat dan bijaksana.

I am proof that if we’re lucky, we emerge from our mistakes as wiser, stronger, better people—and if we’re extremely lucky, happier people.

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. This

men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.

True love is a deep connection that grows stronger with time. It's a partnership that can weather any storm and emerge even stronger.

the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

My father liked to wonder aloud whether the phoenix was re-created by the fire of its funeral pyre or transformed so that what emerged was a soulless shadow of its former being, identical in appearance but without the joy in life its predecessor had had. He wondered alternatively whether the fire might be purificatory, a redemptive, rejuvenating blaze that destroyed the withered shell of the old phoenix and allowed the creature’s essence to emerge stronger than it was before in a young, new body. Or, he would ask, was the fire a manifestation of entropy, slowly sapping the life-energy of the phoenix over the eons, a little death in a life that could know no beginning and no end but which could nonetheless be subject to an ever-decreasing magnitude? He asked me once if I thought the fires in our lives, the traumas, increased our fulfillment by setting up contrasts that illuminated more clearly our everyday joys; or perhaps I viewed them instead as tests that made us stronger by teaching us to endure; or did I believe, rather, that they simply amplified what we already were, in the end making the strong stronger, the weak weaker, and the dangerous deadly?

In the contemporary rendition, it’s not that the slave technology grows stronger than us and learns to disobey our commands—it’s that we deteriorate to the level of the machines. Smart technology makes us dumber.

In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee. I loved picturing one of Octavia’s arms stretching out to meet one of her mother’s arms, and one of her mother’s mother’s arms, and her mother’s mother’s mother’s. . . . Suckered, elastic arms, reaching back through time: an octopus chorus line stretching not just hundreds, but many thousands of miles long. Back past the Cenozoic, the time when our ancestors descended from the trees; back past the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the land; back past the Permian and the rise of the ancestors of the mammals; back, past the Carboniferous’s coal-forming swamp forests; back past the Devonian, when amphibians emerged from the water; back past the Silurian, when plants first took root on land—all the way to the Ordovician, to a time before the advent of wings or knees or lungs, before the fishes had bony jaws, before blood pumped from a multichambered heart. More than 500 million years ago, the tides would have been stronger, the days shorter, the year longer, and the air too high in carbon dioxide for mammals or birds to breathe. All the earth’s continents huddled in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet still, the arm of Octavia’s ancestor, sensitive, suckered, and supple, would have been recognizable as one of an octopus.

The connection between women.’ Vivienne emerged from the shower, her hair dripping, a white towel around her torso. ‘It shouldn’t be overlooked, the power of sisterhood. We’re strong by ourselves and stronger together.

It’s a little unnatural, I know, to feel gratitude for things we never wanted to happen in the first place. But we know, at this point, the opportunities and benefits that lie within adversities. We know that in overcoming them, we emerge stronger, sharper, empowered. There is little reason to delay these feelings. To begrudgingly acknowledge later that it was for the best, when we could have felt that in advance because it was inevitable.

Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength. The converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties.

Strong community is formed by powerful common experiences, as when people survive a flood or fight together in a battle. When they emerge on the other side, this shared experience becomes the basis for a deep, permanent bond that is stronger than blood. The more intense the experience, the more intense the bond. When we experience Christ’s radical grace through repentance and faith, it becomes the most intense, foundational event of our lives. Now, when we meet someone from a different culture, race, or social class who has received the same grace, we see someone who has been through the same life-and-death experience. In Christ, we have both spiritually died and been raised to new life (Rom 6:4 – 6; Eph 2:1 – 6). And because of this common experience of rescue, we now share an identity marker even more indelible than the ties that bind us to our family, our race, or our culture.

However, society is only composed of weak persons and strong; well, if the pact must perforce displease both weak and strong, there is great cause to suppose it will fail to suit society, and the previously existing state of warfare must appear infinitely preferable, since it permitted everyone the free exercise of his strength and his industry, whereof he would discover himself deprived by a society's unjust pact which takes too much from the one and never accords enough to the other; hence, the truly intelligent person is he who, indifferent to the risk of renewing the state of war that reigned prior to the contract, lashes out in irrevocable violation of that contract, violates it as much and often as he is able, full certain that what he will gain from these ruptures will always be more important than what he will lose if he happens to be a member of the weaker class; for such he was when he respected the treaty; by breaking it he may become one of the stronger; and if the laws return him to the class whence he wished to emerge, the worst that can befall him is the loss of his life, which is a misfortune infinitely less great than that of existing in opprobrium and wretchedness. There are then two positions available to us: either crime, which renders us happy, or the noose, which prevents us from being unhappy. I ask whether there can be any hesitation, lovely Therese, and where will your little mind find an argument able to combat that one?

But I do know that there is incredible value in pain and suffering, if you allow yourself to experience it, to cry, to feel sorrow and grief, to hurt. Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

... [O]ne of the most influential approaches to thinking about memory in recent years, known as connectionism, has abandoned the idea that a memory is an activated picture of a past event. Connectionist or neural network models are based on the principle that the brain stores engrams by increasing the strength of connections between different neurons that participate in encoding an experience. When we encode an experience, connections between active neurons become stronger, and this specific pattern of brain activity constitutes the engram. Later, as we try to remember the experience, a retrieval cue will induce another pattern of activity in the brain. If this pattern is similar enough to a previously encoded pattern, remembering will occur. The "memory" in a neural network model is not simply an activated engram, however. It is a unique pattern that emerges from the pooled contributions of the cue and the engram. A neural network combines information in the present environment with patterns that have been stored in the past, and the resulting mixture of the two is what the network remembers... When we remember, we complete a pattern with the best match available in memory; we do not shine a spotlight on a stored picture.

You must not go there in too anemic or enervated a condition, if you set a value on coming out of it stronger. I do not consider it a great misfortune for you to be obliged to be a soldier, but rather as a very serious trial from which you will emerge - if you emerge at all - a very great artist.

The old primitive passions, which civilization has denied, surge up all the stronger for repression. In a moment imagination and instinct travel back through the centuries, and the wild man of the woods emerges from the mental prison in which he has been confined. This is the deeper part of the psychology of the war fever.

Some of the more successful Neanderthal genes have become especially widespread, such as those affecting immunity. Some Europeans and many South Asians, for example, inherited a gene that causes a much stronger immune reaction to a COVID-19 virus infection. Carriers of the Neanderthal gene are three times more likely to die from this newly emerged virus.

Trump and his supporters didn’t realize it, but in the four years before 2015, net migration from Mexico had fallen to zero, in part because construction jobs in the United States had been harder to find. This dynamic, with falling population growth in the emerging world reducing migration to the developed world, is likely to grow stronger in coming years.

It was a quirk of blind optimism that held that someone broken could, in time, heal, could reassemble all the pieces and emerge whole, perhaps even stronger for the ordeal. Certainly wiser, for what else could be the reward for suffering? The notion that did not sit well, with anyone, was that one so broken might remain that way – neither dying (and so removing the egregious example of failure from all mortal eyes) nor improving. A ruined soul should not be stubborn, should not cling to what was clearly a miserable existence. Friends recoil. Acquaintances drift away. And the one who fell finds a solitary world, a place where no refuge could be found from loneliness when loneliness was the true reward of surviving for ever maimed, for ever weakened. Yet who would not choose that fate, when the alternative was pity?

She thinks positivity is particularly widespread in the USA, but has become a kind of universally accepted international pocket psychology in most Western countries — we should all 'think positively, be ‘resource-oriented and see problems as interesting ‘challenges'. This phenomenon has now reached the point where seriously ill people are expected to 'learn from their illness' and ideally emerge as a stronger person on the other side.

In the first case it emerges that the evidence that might refute a theory can often be unearthed only with the help of an incompatible alternative: the advice (which goes back to Newton and which is still popular today) to use alternatives only when refutations have already discredited the orthodox theory puts the cart before the horse. Also, some of the most important formal properties of a theory are found by contrast, and not by analysis. A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. He must compare ideas with other ideas rather than with 'experience' and he must try to improve rather than discard the views that have failed in the competition. Proceeding in this way he will retain the theories of man and cosmos that are found in Genesis, or in the Pimander, he will elaborate them and use them to measure the success of evolution and other 'modern' views. He may then discover that the theory of evolution is not as good as is generally assumed and that it must be supplemented, or entirely replaced, by an improved version of Genesis. Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others in greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness. Nothing is ever settled, no view can ever be omitted from a comprehensive account. Plutarch or Diogenes Laertius, and not Dirac or von Neumann, are the models for presenting a knowledge of this kind in which the history of a science becomes an inseparable part of the science itself - it is essential for its further development as well as for giving content to the theories it contains at any particular moment. Experts and laymen, professionals and dilettani, truth-freaks and liars - they all are invited to participate in the contest and to make their contribution to the enrichment of our culture. The task of the scientist, however, is no longer 'to search for the truth', or 'to praise god', or 'to synthesize observations', or 'to improve predictions'. These are but side effects of an activity to which his attention is now mainly directed and which is 'to make the weaker case the stronger' as the sophists said, and thereby to sustain the motion of the whole.

But someday, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man, of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality — while it is only his absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home the redemption of this reality; it's redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. The man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness — he must come one day.

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. This we have done in full measure, ironic though it seems. We have both known fear, and loneliness, and very great distress. I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end. We have conquered ours, or so we believe.

Stand outside the rare movie with a strong and daring female protagonist, and watch women emerging with higher heads, stronger walks, and greater confidence. Consider the importance of a sports champion who comes from a group that has been made to feel it can’t win, a popular movie in which American Indians are finally the “good guys,” a violinist whose music soars while he sits onstage in leg braces, a deaf actress who introduces millions of moviegoers to the expressiveness of sign language, and even one woman who remains joyous, free, sexual, and good at her work after sixty or seventy. The images of power, grace, and competence that these people convey have a life-giving impact—just as trivialized, stereotyped, degrading, subservient, and pornographic images of bodies that look like ours do the opposite, as though we absorb that denigration or respect through our nerve endings. Wherever negative physical imagery has been part of low self-esteem, a counterpoint of positive imagery can be part of raising it.

If I've learned one thing in my years of studying the social impacts of disease, it's that we live in a world where we're connected, for better or worse, to the people in our human community by the microbes that we share between us. And in times of contagious disease crisis, if we fail to recognize our shared connection, we are most certainly doomed, because our fates hang together, yoked by tiny particles that threaten us all. Scores of historical figures-both famous and infamous-have taught me as much. By learning the stories of those who lived before us, by educating ourselves about the worlds they inhabited and the viruses and bacteria that lived in, with, and through them, we can learn how to emerge from the novel coronavirus pandemic stronger than ever before and well prepared for the next new disease we will inevitably face. If we don't learn from their examples, however, I foresee a world adrift, damned by alienation from its own history, a victim of self-annihilation cued, rather than caused, by the novel coronavirus.

When changes in one genetic trait are the source of selection for changes in a second, the rate of response in the latter depends in parts on the rate of change in the former, which, as a rule, is not fast. In comparison, if a cultural practice modifies selection acting on human genetic variation, then the greater the proportion of individuals in the population that exhibit the cultural trait, the stronger the selection on the gene. As a consequence, the rapid spread of a cultural practice often leads quickly to the maximally strong selection of the advantageous genetic variant, which rapidly increases in frequency. Cultural practices typically spread more quickly than genetic mutations, simply because cultural learning typically operates at faster rates than biological evolution. What does the speed with which a culturla trait spreads depend upon? Answer: the fidelity of cultural transmission. The very factor that is critical to the emergence of complex cumulative culture in humans is also a major determinant of evolutionary responses to that culture.

When I met Maria at Sachs' apartment in 1979, she hadn't slept with a man in close to three years. It took her that long to recover from the shock of the beating, and abstinence was not a choice so much as a necessity, the only possible cure. As much as the physical humiliation she had suffered, the incident with Jerome had been a spiritual defeat. For the first time in her life, Maria had been chastened. She had stepped over the boundaries of herself, and the brutality of that experience had altered her sense of who she was. Until then, she had imagined herself capable of any thing: any adventure, any transgression, any dare. She had felt stronger than other people, immunized against the ravages and failures that afflict the rest of humanity. After the switch with Lilian, she learned how badly she had deceived herself. She was weak, she discovered, a person hemmed in by her own fears and inner constraints, as mortal and confused as anyone else. It took her three years to repair the damage (to the extent that it was ever repaired), and when we crossed paths at Sachs's apartment that night, she was more or less ready to emerge from her shell.

Is this even possible today?- But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality-while it is only his absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home the redemption of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it.

A word to the wise, NEVER try and push bigger miles when you begin a long distance hike without any prior experience or conditioning. Listen to your body, and unless you absolutely have to go further due to water or an emergency, stop when it tells you to stop. It will save you a tremendous amount of pain and heartache. I can’t tell you how many people I saw quit the trail due to overdoing it in the beginning and hurting themselves or causing themselves more pain than they could tolerate. There is no harm in going slow and building yourself up gradually. You have plenty of time and distance to grow stronger, and believe me, you will! I

It was a strange war. No territory was gained, no prisoners were taken. It was for honor only, man against man. With time, a mutual rhythm emerged: we fought a civilized seven days out of ten, with time off for festivals and funerals. No raids, no surprise attacks. The leaders, once buoyant with hopes of swift victory, grew resigned to a lengthy engagement. The armies were remarkably well matched, could tussle on the field day after day with no side discernibly stronger. This was due in part to the soldiers who poured in from all over Anatolia to help the Trojans and make their names. Our people were not the only ones greedy for glory.

Recent research cited by Cass Sunstein, for example, has shown that people with a particular political orientation who join a like-minded group emerge from that group with stronger political leanings than they started with. “In almost every group,” Sunstein writes, “people ended up with more extreme positions …. The result is group polarization, which occurs when like-minded people interact and end up in a more extreme position in line with their original inclinations.” And with the Internet added to the fundamentalist equation, it is now easier than ever for extremists of all types to find their ideological soul mates and reinforce their radical thinking.

have learned that trauma can steal everything from you that is most precious and rip joy right out of your life. But, paradoxically, it can also make you stronger and wiser, and connect you more deeply to other people than you ever imagined by enabling you to touch their misfortunes and integrate their losses and pain with your own. If a person can grow through unthinkable trauma and loss, perhaps a nation may, too. If you are one of millions of Americans who have suffered, in these hard days of plague, violence, and climate emergency, a trauma and rupture like the ones we have experienced in our family, I bid you and your family deep healing and recovery for the battles

How long have you known about him?” I asked Jesse, using my free hand to gesture toward his guest. “Forever. Nearly as long as I did about you.” “God, Jesse. Why didn’t you say anything?” “He was a shadow of you.” Jesse shrugged. “His background is diluted, his dragon blood les strong. Even with you in his proximity, I wasn’t certain any of his drakon traits would emerge. He hasn’t anywhere near your potential.” “Pardon me,” Armand said, freezingly polite, “but he is still right here with you in this room.” “Do you mean…I did it?” I asked. “I made him figure it out? What he is?” Jesse gave me an assessing look. “Like is drawn to like. We’re all three of us thick with magic now, even if it’s different kinds. It’s inevitable that we’ll feed off one another. The only way to prevent that would be to separate. And even then it might not be enough. Too much has already begun.” “I don’t want to separate from you,” I said. “No.” Jesse lifted our hands and gave mine a kiss. “Don’t worry about that.” Armand practically rolled his eyes. “If you two are quite done, might we talk some sense tonight? It’s late, I’m tired, and your ruddy chair, Holms, is about as comfortable as sitting on a tack. I want to…” But his voice only faded into silence. He closed his eyes and raised a hand to his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose. I noted again those shining nails. The elegance of his bones beneath his flawless skin. Skin that was marble-pale, I realized. Just like mine. “Yes?” I said, more gently than I’d intended. “Excuse me. I’m finding this all a bit…impossible to process. I’m beginning to believe that this is the most profoundly unpleasant dream I’ve ever been caught in.” “Allow me to assure you that you’re awake, Lord Armand,” I retorted, all gentleness gone. “To wit: You hear music no one else does. Distinctive music from gemstones and all sorts of metals. That day I played the piano at Tranquility, I was playing your father’s ruby song, one you must have heard exactly as I did. Exactly as your mother would have. You also have, perhaps, something like a voice inside you. Something specific and base, stronger than instinct, hopeless to ignore. Animals distrust you. You might even dream of smoke or flying.” He dropped his arm. “You got that from the diary.” “No, I got that from my own life. And damned lucky you are to have been brought into this world as a pampered little prince instead of spending your childhood being like this and still having to fend for yourself, as I did.” “Right. Lucky me.” Armand looked at Jesse, his eyes glittering. “And what are you? Another dragon? A gargoyle, perchance, or a werecat?” “Jesse is a star.” The hand went up to conceal his face again. “Of course he is. The. Most. Unpleasant. Dream. Ever.” I separated my hand from Jesse’s, angling for more bread. “I think you’re going to have to show him.” “Aye.” A single blue eye blinked open between Armand’s fingers. “Show me what?

Girls spend slightly more time playing with the doll than with the truck. Boys on the other hand typically spend great deal more time playing with the truck rather than with the doll. We were taught that the social construction of gender is the appropriate framework in which to understand these results [..] We give girls a fairly consistent message that girls are supposed to play with dolls and not with trucks. So when offered a choice girls will be more likely to play with dolls rather than trucks. But if a girl picks up a truck it's not a catastrophe. WIth boys the stakes are higher, we send boys a much stronger message what a boy is and is not supposed to do. Boys are not supposed to play with dolls. Boys get that message loud and clear.

Nature has taught me about fluid adaptability. About not only weathering storms, but using howling winds to spread seeds wide, torrential rains to nurture roots so they can grow deeper and stronger. Nature has taught me that a storm can be used to clear out branches that are dying, to let go of that which was keeping us from growing in new directions. These are lessons we need for organizing. As Octavia taught us, the only lasting truth is change. We will face social and political storms we could not even imagine. The question becomes not just how do we survive them, but how do we prepare so when we do suddenly find ourselves in the midst of an unexpected onslaught, we can capture the potential, the possibilities inherent in the chaos, and ride it like dawn skimming the horizon?

And then everything changed. Liberal democracy crawled out of history’s dustbin, cleaned itself up and conquered the world. The supermarket proved to be far stronger than the gulag. The blitzkrieg began in southern Europe, where the authoritarian regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal collapsed, giving way to democratic governments. In 1977 Indira Gandhi ended the Emergency, re-establishing democracy in India. During the 1980s military dictatorships in East Asia and Latin America were replaced by democratic governments in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan and South Korea. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the liberal wave turned into a veritable tsunami, sweeping away the mighty Soviet Empire, and raising expectations of the coming end of history. After decades of defeats and setbacks, liberalism won a decisive victory in the Cold War, emerging triumphant from the humanist wars of religion, albeit a bit worse for wear. As the Soviet Empire imploded, liberal democracies replaced communist regimes not only in eastern Europe, but also in many of the former Soviet republics, such as the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. Even Russia nowadays pretends to be a democracy. Victory in the Cold War gave renewed impetus for the spread of the liberal model elsewhere around the world, most notably in Latin America, South Asia and Africa. Some liberal experiments ended in abject failures, but the number of success stories is impressive. For instance, Indonesia, Nigeria and Chile have been ruled by military strongmen for decades, but all are now functioning democracies

He [Thomas Mann] remembered this Beethoven quartet [his op. 132] as being sad, sometimes mournful. What was surprising now was that, while the undertone was melancholy, the way the instruments stopped and started and then moved into melody made it uplifting. The suffering in the music was buried in every note, but so too was something almost stronger, some sense of an unyielding beauty that after a few minutes rose, as though surprised at its own vigor, into a sound that made him stop thinking, stop trying to find meaning in this, and simply listen, let his spirit absorb what was being played. ...To move from the bombast of the symphonies to the unearthly loneliness of this quartet, , he though, must have been a journey that even Beethoven himself could not easily comprehend. It must have come as though some strange, tentative, shivering knowledge emerged suddenly into clarity.

Why did this unique process start in England and why in the seventeenth century? Why did England develop pluralistic political institutions and break away from extractive institutions? As we have seen, the political developments leading up to the Glorious Revolution were shaped by several interlinked processes. Central was the political conflict between absolutism and its opponents. The outcome of this conflict not only put a stop to the attempts to create a renewed and stronger absolutism in England, but also empowered those wishing to fundamentally change the institutions of society. The opponents of absolutism did not simply attempt to build a different type of absolutism. This was not simply the House of Lancaster defeating the House of York in the War of the Roses. Instead, the Glorious Revolution involved the emergence of a new regime based on constitutional rule and pluralism. This

Tamlin gripped my hand as we strode through the darkness. Neither of us said anything when a glimmer of sunlight appeared, staining the damp cave walls with a silvery sheen, but our steps quickened as the sunlight grew brighter and the cave warmer, and then both of us emerged onto the spring-green grass that covered the bumps and hollows of his lands. Our lands. The breeze, the scent of wildflowers hit me, and despite the hole in my chest, the stain on my soul, I couldn't stop the smile that spread as we mounted a steep hill. My faerie legs were far stronger than my human ones, and when we reached the top of the knoll, I wasn't nearly as winded as I might once have been. But the breath was knocked from my chest when I beheld the rose-covered manor. Home. In all my imaginings in Amarantha's dungeons, I'd never allowed myself to think of this moment- never allowed myself to dream that outrageously. But I'd made it- I'd brought us both home.

My hypothesis is mimetic: because humans imitate one another more than animals, they have had to find a means of dealing with contagious similarity, which could lead to the pure and simple disappearance of their society. The mechanism that reintroduces difference into a situation in which everyone has come to resemble everyone else is sacrifice. Humanity results from sacrifice; we are thus the children of religion. What I call after Freud the founding murder, in other words, the immolation of a sacrificial victim that is both guilty of disorder and able to restore order, is constantly re-enacted in the rituals at the origin of our institutions. Since the dawn of humanity, millions of innocent victims have been killed in this way in order to enable their fellow humans to live together, or at least not to destroy one another. This is the implacable logic of the sacred, which myths dissimulate less and less as humans become increasingly self-aware. The decisive point in this evolution is Christian revelation, a kind of divine expiation in which God through his Son could be seen as asking for forgiveness from humans for having revealed the mechanisms of their violence so late. Rituals had slowly educated them; from then on, humans had to do without. Christianity demystifies religion. Demystification, which is good in the absolute, has proven bad in the relative, for we were not prepared to shoulder its consequences. We are not Christian enough. The paradox can be put a different way. Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse. Indeed, it is in the apocalyptic texts that the word of God is most forceful, repudiating mistakes that are entirely the fault of humans, who are less and less inclined to acknowledge the mechanisms of their violence. The longer we persist in our error, the stronger God’s voice will emerge from the devastation. […] The Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the sacred and revealed its violence. […] By accepting crucifixion, Christ brought to light what had been ‘hidden since the foundation of the world,’ in other words, the foundation itself, the unanimous murder that appeared in broad daylight for the first time on the cross. In order to function, archaic religions need to hide their founding murder, which was being repeated continually in ritual sacrifices, thereby protecting human societies from their own violence. By revealing the founding murder, Christianity destroyed the ignorance and superstition that are indispensable to such religions. It thus made possible an advance in knowledge that was until then unimaginable. […] A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one. Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the escalation to extremes. The protective system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the Crucifixion narratives as they reveal Jesus’ innocence, and, little by little, that of all analogous victims. The process of education away from violent sacrifice is thus underway, but it is going very slowly, making advances that are almost always unconscious. […] Mimetic theory does not seek to demonstrate that myth is null, but to shed light on the fundamental discontinuity and continuity between the passion and archaic religion. Christ’s divinity which precedes the Crucifixion introduces a radical rupture with the archaic, but Christ’s resurrection is in complete continuity with all forms of religion that preceded it. The way out of archaic religion comes at this price. A good theory about humanity must be based on a good theory about God. […] We can all participate in the divinity of Christ so long as we renounce our own violence.

When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

There are many reasons why the tech revolution will hit the emerging world much harder than it will hit Europe and the United States. In developed countries, children are more likely to grow up with digital technologies as toys and then to encounter them in school. Governments in these countries have money to invest in educational systems that prepare workers, both blue and white collar, for change. Their universities have much greater access to state-of-the-art technologies. Their companies produce the innovations that drive tech change in the first place. This creates a dynamic in which high-wage countries are more likely than low-wage ones to dominate the skill-intensive industries that will generate twenty-first-century growth, leaving behind large numbers of those billion-plus people who only recently emerged from age-old deprivation. The wealth in developed countries helps them maintain much stronger social safety nets than in poorer countries to help citizens who lose their jobs, fall ill, or need to care for sick children or aging parents. In short, wealthier countries are both more adaptable and more resilient than developing ones.

As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it. We

The morning after / my death” The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be * There was the great death of birds the moon was consumed with fire the stars were visible until noon. Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. The moon darkened at dawn the mountain quivered with anticipation and the ocean was double-shaded: the blue of its surface with the blue of flowers mingled in horizontal water trails there was a breeze to witness the hour * The sun darkened at the fifth hour of the day the beach was covered with conversations pebbles started to pour into holes and waves came in like horses. * The moon darkened on Christmas eve angels ate lemons in illuminated churches there was a blue rug planted with stars above our heads lemonade and war news competed for our attention our breath was warmer than the hills. * There was a great slaughter of rocks of spring leaves of creeks the stars showed fully the last king of the Mountain gave battle and got killed. We lay on the grass covered dried blood with our bodies green blades swayed between our teeth. * We went out to sea a bank of whales was heading South a young man among us a hero tried to straddle one of the sea creatures his body emerged as a muddy pool as mud we waved goodbye to his remnants happy not to have to bury him in the early hours of the day We got drunk in a barroom the small town of Fairfax had just gone to bed cherry trees were bending under the weight of their flowers: they were involved in a ceremonial dance to which no one had ever been invited. * I know flowers to be funeral companions they make poisons and venoms and eat abandoned stone walls I know flowers shine stronger than the sun their eclipse means the end of times but I love flowers for their treachery their fragile bodies grace my imagination’s avenues without their presence my mind would be an unmarked grave. * We met a great storm at sea looked back at the rocking cliffs the sand was going under black birds were leaving the storm ate friends and foes alike water turned into salt for my wounds. * Flowers end in frozen patterns artificial gardens cover the floors we get up close to midnight search with powerful lights the tiniest shrubs on the meadows A stream desperately is running to the ocean The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)

A slender figure emerged from behind an inflorescence of snow-white blooms. Helen's crystalline eyes caught the light, and her pretty lips rounded like a tea rose as she said his name in soundless bewilderment. She moved toward him, stumbling a little as she came around the table too fast. The hint of clumsiness, her obvious haste, electrified him. She had missed him. She had wanted him, too. Reaching her in three swift strides, Rhys caught her up against him so tightly that her toes left the floor. Momentum turned them in a half-circle. Letting her back down, he dove his face into the warm fragrant skin of her neck and breathed her, absorbed her. Cariad," he said huskily, "that was the first time I've ever seen you move with less than swanlike grace." She gave an unsteady laugh. "You surprised me." Her warm, delicate hands came to the cold sides of his face. "You're here," she said, as if trying to make herself believe it. Breathing unevenly, Rhys nuzzled her, amazed by the silkiness of her skin and hair, the tenderness of her flesh. Something like elation, only stronger, was pouring into his veins, intoxicating him. "I could eat you," he muttered, pushing past her caressing hands to find her lips, feeling her mouth with his. Helen responded eagerly, her fingers sliding into his hair and shaping against his skull. He murmured rough-soft endearments between kisses, while Helen clung to him.

Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing more.” “I have failed,” I said, “I have lost myself — would it had been my shadow.” I looked round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record. Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?

It was the economy that troubled most people prior to World War II. Europe, especially Germany, was dealing with a deep worldwide depression. Fascism was gaining a stronghold in Germany as well as in many other European countries. Although small and generally not popular, the Communist Party was the only organized group to stand in opposition to the Nazis. Small bands of these Communists occasionally attempted to disrupt the government by rioting in the streets. Occasionally gunfire would be heard, but very little could be done about it by a people that did not want to get involved. Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” were rapidly solidifying their position, and the Nazi Party was becoming stronger. Even though they frequently violated the National Constitution, they brought order to what had been chaos. The Treaty of Versailles, enacted after World War I, was hated by the German people, who felt that it suppressed them in a most demeaning way. However now Hitler was putting people to work building cars and an autobahn highway system that connected the larger cities. Modernization of airports and the development of a national railroad were all in violation of the imposed international regulations. Workers were again bringing paychecks home and could once more feed their families. Therefore, little thought was given to Hitler’s power grab. Germany was emerging from the dark era following World War I, and things were getting better. The Vaterland was regaining its strength, without regard to what France and other European countries thought.... After all, what could they, or would they, do about it?

posttraumatic growth. Many people who suffer shattering experiences are scarred for life, with little hope of recovery. But for others, shattering experiences prompt them to face their fears, transcend the horrors of the past, and become resilient. PTSD is not a life sentence. POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH While PTSD grabs the headlines, news stories about posttraumatic growth are rare. Up to two thirds of those who experience traumatic events do not develop PTSD. This estimate is based on studies of the mental health of people who have undergone similar experiences. Studies of US veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan show this two-thirds to one-third split. What’s the difference between the two groups? Research reveals a correlation between negative childhood events and the development of adult PTSD. Yet some people emerge from miserable childhoods stronger and more resilient than their peers. Adversity can sometimes make us even stronger than we might have been had we not suffered it. Research shows that people who experience a traumatic event but are then able to process and integrate the experience are more resilient than those who don’t experience such an event. Such people are even better prepared for future adversity. When you’re exposed to a stressor and successfully regulate your brain’s fight-or-flight response, you increase the neural connections associated with handling trauma, as we saw in Chapter 6. Neural plasticity works in your favor. You increase the size of the signaling pathways in your nervous system that handle recovery from stress. These larger and improved signaling pathways equip you to handle future stress better, making you more resilient in the face of life’s upsets and problems.

The very human-looking, terrified eyes of the young woman are burned into my mind. “What are they?” I ask, still shaken. “They’re seals. Very fierce seals, at that.” My aunt pauses to lean back against the elaborately embroidered cushions. “Long ago, the Selkies were enchanted by a sea witch. Every full moon they come to shore somewhere on the coast, step out of their seal skin and emerge in human form. For many years they caused a great deal of havoc—attacking sailors, dismantling ships. It was terrible.” “But she looked so frail.” “Ah, it’s like I just said. Appearances can be deceiving. Selkies, in possession of their skins, are stronger than the strongest Mage, and like most seals, they are very dangerous predators.” “And without their skins?” “Very good, Elloren.” My aunt looks pleased. “You’ve gotten right to the heart of it. Without their skins, they can be easily controlled.” “Why?” “Because they lose their strength, and because they cannot transform back into seals without them. Without their skins, they cannot get back to the ocean. Being wild animals, no matter how long they are kept in human form, they desperately want to get back to their ocean home. They’re not human, Elloren. It’s only an illusion. Don’t let it trouble you.” “But why was she in a cage?” My aunt grimaces at my question, like she’s detected an unpleasant odor. “Some people like to keep them...as pets.” I scrutinize her face. She’s not looking at me. She’s now glancing toward the window impatiently. “She...she looked so terrified,” I say, upset. My aunt’s expression softens. “Well, caged wild animals are never a pleasant sight. I am completely and utterly against the Selkie trade and am doing everything I can to wipe it out.” She pats my hand reassuringly.

Then, at last, with the spark of life came the creation of humanity. Such was the explosive force of this creation that the light and its shadow were split apart and, once separated for long enough to forget it was ever whole, one half became the personification of good and the other half of evil. When this happened, the forces of good and evil fought a battle to see who’d win influence over humanity. But since both sides were always perfectly matched, no victor ever emerged. Eventually, the powers that be invented the game of chess to decide the fate of humankind, since this method would be both less bloody and over far quicker. However, it didn’t help, since every game still ended in a stalemate. Eventually it was decided, by an extremely lengthy and infinitely tedious board meeting, that the influence over humanity would be shared: the forces of good would influence their hearts; the forces of evil would influence their minds. Angels and demons were scattered throughout Earth and Everwhere to exert their influence by these means. So humanity was left with a choice: to follow their hearts or their heads. But, once the agreement was made, it soon became clear that humans found it far easier to listen to their heads than their hearts, thus ensuring the demonic influence was far stronger than the angelic. It was widely believed, at least among the angels, that the demons had cheated. However, since they could never prove how, and since the terms of the deal, being sealed by both spirit and soul, were irreversible, there was nothing to be done. Thus, the whole of humanity was subjected to a terrible fate, fighting to feel the influence of good, to know fulfilment, contentment, and joy, while all too often being drawn into fear, sorrow, and despair. Being cursed with perpetual free will, humans struggled on, often being thrown back and forth between one and the other a dozen times a day. Many descended into madness.

Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength. The converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties

There are no more privileges by birth certificate, none by former positions in life, none by so-called origin, none by so-called education in former times. There is only one criterion: the criterion of the brave, valiant, loyal man, the determined fighter, the daring man who is fit to be a leader of his Volk. Truly, the collapse of an old world has been brought about. From this war arises a blood-fortified Volksgemeinschaft, a stronger one than that we National Socialists were able to convey to the nation after the World War through our avowal of faith. And this will perhaps be the greatest blessing for our Volk in the future: that we will emerge from this war improved in our community, cleansed of many prejudices, that this war will prove all the more how correct the party program of our movement was, how correct our whole National Socialist attitude is. For there is one thing which is certain: no bourgeois state will survive this war. Sooner or later, everybody has to put his cards on the table here. Only he who manages to forge his people into a unity not only as a state but also as a society will emerge as the victor from this war. That we National Socialists laid the foundations a long time ago, we and I owe to our experiences in the first war. That the Greater German Reich must now fight a second war-to this our movement will owe the reinforcement and additional depth of its program in the future. May all those be assured of this who perhaps still believe that maybe one day they will be able to witness the new rosy dawn of their class world through empty talk and faultfinding. These gentlemen will pitifully suffer shipwreck. World history will push them aside, as though they had never existed. Returning from the Great War as a soldier, I once explained this Weltanschauung to the German Volk and created the foundations for the party. Do you believe that any German could offer the soldiers, who today are coming home victorious from the war, anything less than a National Socialist Germany-in the sense of the true fulfillment of our ideas of a true Volksgemeinschaft? That is impossible! And this will surely be the most beneficial blessing of this war in the future. Speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, September 30, 1942

Power is seeping away from autocrats and single-party systems whether they embrace reform or not. It is spreading from large and long-established political parties to small ones with narrow agendas or niche constituencies. Even within parties, party bosses who make decisions, pick candidates, and hammer out platforms behind closed doors are giving way to insurgents and outsiders—to new politicians who haven’t risen up in the party machine, who never bothered to kiss the ring. People entirely outside the party structure—charismatic individuals, some with wealthy backers from outside the political class, others simply catching a wave of support thanks to new messaging and mobilization tools that don’t require parties—are blazing a new path to political power. Whatever path they followed to get there, politicians in government are finding that their tenure is getting shorter and their power to shape policy is decaying. Politics was always the art of the compromise, but now politics is downright frustrating—sometimes it feels like the art of nothing at all. Gridlock is more common at every level of decision-making in the political system, in all areas of government, and in most countries. Coalitions collapse, elections take place more often, and “mandates” prove ever more elusive. Decentralization and devolution are creating new legislative and executive bodies. In turn, more politicians and elected or appointed officials are emerging from these stronger municipalities and regional assemblies, eating into the power of top politicians in national capitals. Even the judicial branch is contributing: judges are getting friskier and more likely to investigate political leaders, block or reverse their actions, or drag them into corruption inquiries that divert them from passing laws and making policy. Winning an election may still be one of life’s great thrills, but the afterglow is diminishing. Even being at the top of an authoritarian government is no longer as safe and powerful a perch as it once was. As Professor Minxin Pei, one of the world’s most respected experts on China, told me: “The members of the politburo now openly talk about the old good times when their predecessors at the top of the Chinese Communist Party did not have to worry about bloggers, hackers, transnational criminals, rogue provincial leaders or activists that stage 180,000 public protests each year. When challengers appeared, the old leaders had more power to deal with them. Today’s leaders are still very powerful but not as much as those of a few decades back and their powers are constantly declining.”3

Indeed, our recent research has led us to conclude that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.

THE CODE OF A GOOD TRAINING PARTNER I will show up on time for every workout, and if I can’t avoid missing one, I’ll let my partner know as soon as I know. I will come to the gym to train—not to chat. When we’re in the gym, we focus on our workouts, we’re always ready to spot each other, and we get our work done efficiently. I will train hard to set a good example for my partner. I will push my partner to do more than she thinks she can. It’s my job to motivate her to do more weight and more reps than she believes possible. I will be supportive of my partner and will compliment her on her gains. I won’t let my partner get out of a workout easily. I will reject any excuses that are short of an actual emergency or commitment that can’t be rescheduled, and I will insist that she comes and trains. In the case where there’s a valid excuse, I’ll offer to train at a different time so we can get our workout in (if at all possible).

World War II did more than usher in unparalleled prosperity for the United States. It transformed America's foreign relations. The war devastated the Axis nations, which took years to recover. It also savaged America's allies, including the Soviet Union, which lost an estimated 25 million people during six years of fighting. Alone of the world's great powers the United States emerged immeasurably stronger, both absolutely and relatively, from the carnage.

As it was with ancient Israel, the quarried stone would become the embodiment of a nation’s misplaced confidence in its own power to emerge stronger than before. And the act of laying down the quarried stone would be a manifestation of what the commentaries call the spirit of defiance:

You may mourn for the person you once were, the one with innocent trust, but you’ll emerge a stronger person with a closer relationship with God.

But to Holland, the concept of prediction and models actually ran far deeper than conscious thought-or for that matter, far deeper than the existence of a brain. "All complex, adaptive systems- economies, minds, organisms-build models that allow them to anticipate the world," he declares. Yes, even bacteria. As it turns out, says Holland, many bacteria havve special enzyme systems that cause them to swim toward stronger concentrations of glucose. Implicitly, those enzyme model a crucial aspect of the bacterium's world: that chemicals diffuse outward from their source, growing less and less concentrated with distance. And the enzymes simultaneously encode an implicit prediction: If you swim toward higher concentrations, then you're likely to find something nutritious. "It's not a conscious model or anything of that sort," says Holland. "But it gives that organism an advantage over one that doesn't follow the gradient.

The results showed that when established habits were weak, intentions tended to predict behavior. So, if you don’t watch TV news that much, your intention for the coming week, whether it’s to watch more, less, or the same, is likely to be accurate. Good news for our sense of self-control. Here comes the bad news. As habits get stronger, our intentions predict our behavior less and less. So, when you’re in the habit of visiting fast-food restaurants, for example, it doesn’t matter much whether you intend to cut it down or not, chances are that your habit will continue. It gets worse, though. Participants were also asked how confident they were in predicting their behavior over the coming 7 days. An unusual result emerged. Those with the strongest habits, who were the least successful in predicting their behavior over the coming