Emerge Victorious Quotes

Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it's those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trails, or fracture by a permanent, damning fault line.

...but I could not sleep without proper covering and spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious.

How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated. This morning, his life had seemed as bleak as death. Tonight, he held joy in his arms. Someone or something—fate or fortune or Jenny's God—had looked down upon him this morning and seen his anguish. And, for some reason, Jenny had been given back to him. Closing his eyes, Royce brushed a kiss against her smooth forehead. Thank you, he thought. And in his heart, he could have sworn he heard a voice answer, You're welcome.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. Aristotle

In Aikido, we train not to learn how to win; we train to learn to emerge victorious in any situation

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 whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject.

Sometimes when I get up and emerge from the mists of slumber, my whole room hurts, my whole bedroom, the view from the window hurts, kids go to school, people go shopping, everybody knows where to go, only I don't know where I want to go, I get dressed, blearily, stumbling, hopping about to pull on my trousers, I go and shave with my electric razor - for years now, whenever I shave, I've avoided looking at myself in the mirror, I shave in the dark or round the corner, sitting on a chair in the passage, with the socket in the bathroom, I don't like looking at myself any more, I'm scared by my own face in the bathroom, I'm hurt even by my own appearance, I see yesterday's drunkenness in my eyes, I don't even have breakfast any more, or if I do, only coffee and a cigarette, I sit at the table, sometimes my hands give way under me and several times I repeat to myself, Hrabal, Hrabal, Bohumil Hrabal, you've victoried yourself away, you've reached the peak of emptiness, as my Lao Tzu taught me, I've reached the peak of emptiness and everything hurts, even the walk to the bus-stop hurts, and the whole bus hurts as well, I lower my guilty-looking eyes, I'm afraid of looking people in the eye, sometimes I cross my palms and extend my wrists, I hold out my hands so that people can arrest me and hand me over to the cops, because I feel guilty even about this once too loud a solitude which isn't loud any longer, because I'm hurt not only by the escalator which takes me down to the infernal regions below, I'm hurt even by the looks of the people travelling up, each of them has somewhere to go, while I've reached the peak of emptiness and don't know where I want to go.

Writing There is one thing you should know about writing. It will inevitably lead you to dark places as you cannot write authentically about something unless you have lived it. However, you should always bear in mind that you are only a tourist and must always remain one. You were blessed with the gift of words, in order to bring a voice to suffering. But do not be too indulgent despite how addictive sadness can be, how easy it is to get lost down the path of self-destruction. You must emerge from adversity, scathed but victorious to tell your story, and, in turn, light the way for others.

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.

I could not sleep without proper covering and instead spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious.

The battlefield is a perfect backdrop, but the Gita’s subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious. THE

We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.

But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms. Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. Even the confrontation with disease should be approached with the realization that many of the sicknesses of our species are simply conveyances for the inexorable journey by which each of us is returned to the same state of physical, and perhaps spiritual, nonexistence from which we emerged at conception. Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end.

Look at what you've done,' Sanguine said, shaking his head with mock severity. 'You have foiled out insidious little plot. You have emerged triumphant and victorious. Curse you, do-gooders. Curse you.

Yet, in the end, entropy will always emerge victorious, snuffing out the very last glimmer of heat and light. After that there is only darkness. When that state is reached even eternity will cease to exist, for one moment will be like every other and nothingness will claim the universe.

When we awaken each morning, we see around the globe what appear to be Fascism’s early stirrings: the discrediting of mainstream politicians, the emergence of leaders who seek to divide rather than to unite, the pursuit of political victory at all costs, and the invocation of national greatness by people who seem to possess only a warped concept of what greatness means. Most often, the signposts that should alert us are disguised: the altered constitution that passes for reform, the attacks on a free press justified by security, the dehumanization of others masked as a defense of virtue, or the hollowing out of a democratic system so that all is erased but the label.

A case could be made that even the shift into R&D on information technologies and medicine was not so much a reorientation towards market-driven consumer imperatives, but part of an all-out effort to follow the technological humbling of the Soviet Union with total victory in the global class war: not only the imposition of absolute U.S. military dominance overseas, but the utter rout of social movements back home. The technologies that emerged were in almost every case the kind that proved most conducive to surveillance, work discipline, and social control. Computers have opened up certain spaces of freedom, as we’re constantly reminded, but instead of leading to the workless utopia Abbie Hoffman or Guy Debord imagined, they have been employed in such a way as to produce the opposite effect.

My claims were justified in all men's sight; I put my trust in equity and right; Yet, to my horror and the world's disgrace, Justice is mocked, and I have lost my case! A scoundrel whose dishonesty is notorious Emerges from another lie victorious!

There is an important message built into this approach. It says, “When there is conflict between us, we no longer have to mobilize our forces against each other and worry about who will emerge victorious and who will go down in defeat. Instead, we can put our energy into searching for the kinds of solutions that respect both our needs as individuals.

Understand both yourself and your enemy, and you shall always emerge victorious

He fashioned an empire of sorts, bereft of cities yet plagued with the endless dramas of society, its pathetic victories and inevitable failures. The community of enslaved Imass thrived in this quagmire of pettiness. They even managed to convince themselves that they possessed freedom, a will of their own that could shape destiny. They elected champions. They tore down their champions once failure draped its shroud over them. They ran in endless circles and called it growth, emergence, knowledge. While over them all, a presence invisible to their eyes, Raest flexed his will. His greatest joy came when his slaves proclaimed him god – though they knew him not – and constructed temples to serve him and organized priesthoods whose activities mimicked Raest’s tyranny with such cosmic irony that the Jaghut could only shake his head.

In the Bible we read that while Christ hung on the cross a dark cloud engulfed him. What was this dark cloud? Did it signal the victory of nihilism or was it the dark dwelling place of God?

it is easy to imagine the widespread pleasure when in 167 BCE Rome became a tax-free state: the treasury was so overflowing – thanks, in particular, to the spoils from the recent victory over Macedon – that direct taxation of Roman citizens was suspended except in emergencies, although they remained liable to a range of other levies, such as customs dues or a special tax charged on freeing slaves.

History has never been a morality play about the inevitable victory of freedom and democracy. Instead, the world remains what it always was: an arena of struggle between idealism and power, good governance and corruption, the surge of freedom and the need to curb it in times of crisis and emergency.

From this Legionary school a new man will have to emerge, a man with heroic qualities; a giant of our history to do battle and win over all the enemies of our Fatherland, his battle and victory having to extend even beyond the material world into the realm of invisible enemies, the powers of evil. Everything that our mind can imagine as more beautiful spiritually; everything the proudest that our race can produce, greater, more just, more powerful, wiser, purer, more diligent and more heroic, this is what the Legionary school must give us! A man in whom all the possibilities of human grandeur that are implanted by God in the blood of our people be developed to the maximum. This hero, the product of Legionary education, will also know how to elaborate programs; will also know how to solve the Jewish problem; will also know how to organize the state well; will also know how to convince other Romanians; and if not, he will know how to win, for that is why he is a hero. This hero, this Legionary of bravery, labour, and justice, with the powers God implanted in his soul, will lead our Fatherland on the road of its glory.

When someone asked if he had ever doubted the North’s final victory, he shot back, “Never for a moment.” He quoted Seward, saying “that there was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency, and he agreed with Mr. Seward in this view.

That truth set me free, along with other truths like leaning daily on God’s grace and realizing that God’s children are never victims. Everything that touches their lives, he permits. The irony is, you can’t imagine a more victimized person than Jesus. Yet when he died, he didn’t say, “I am finished” but “It is finished.” He did not play the victim, and thus he emerged the victor. Forget the self-pity. True, your supervisor may be trying to push you out of your job. Your marriage may be a fiery trial. You might be living below the poverty level. But victory is ours in Christ. His grace is sufficient. Know this truth and it will set you free. This day, Jesus, I can feel sorry for myself or victorious in you. Show me how to choose the latter.

If we're all a mix of good and bad then there's always a chance that good might emerge victorious in the end if we give God enough time to do His work. Patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God.

Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems—the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.

The group that emerged as victorious and declared itself orthodox determined the shape of Christianity for posterity—determining its internal structure, writing its creeds, and compiling its revered texts into a sacred canon of Scripture.

If a man feared defeat, he would never give battle... Every victory is inevitably succeeded by defeat. It is the nature of our lives. A man might fight a thousand battles and emerge triumphant from every one; still, he will suffer defeat in the end, for we die and we are forgotten. If we cannot face defeat, we must live always, throughout our lives, in fear. For it awaits us all.

Every day, they brought the papers. I read just the headlines: ‘Chernobyl, Site of Heroic Deeds’, ‘Reactor Is Vanquished’, ‘Life Goes On’, We had political officers. They put on political sessions, told us we had to emerge victorious. Over what? The atom? Physics? The cosmos?

In the fall of 2004, after both WMDs and easy victory were revealed as mirages, a presidential aide made an astounding admission to The New York Times Magazine. The White House, he said, didn’t waste time worrying about those “in what we call the reality-based community” who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” That, the aide said, “is not the way the world really works anymore. . . . When we act, we create our own reality.

For those who have walked through the fires of hell and rather than fall to its flames, have emerged battered, but victorious. In the immortal words of Ovid: Quin ninc quoque frigidus artus, dum loquor, horror habet, parsque est meminisse doloris- Even now while I tell it, cold horror envelops me and my pains return the minute I think of it. We can never escape the pain of our pasts, or the flashbacks that assault us when we dare to let our thoughts drift unattended, but we can choose to not let it ruin the future we, alone, can build for ourselves. And for those who are currently trapped in a bad situation. May you find the resolute strength it takes to free yourself, and to finally see the beauty that lives inside you. You are resplendent, and you deserve respect and love. Don't let the minions of hatred or cruelty define you, or steal away your own humanity. When our compassion and ability to love and appreciate others go, then our bullies and oppressors have truly won, for it is not they who are harmed, but rather we who lose our souls and hearts to the same miserable bitterness that causes them to lash out against us. The cycle can be broken- it must be broken, even though the path is never easy or without cost. Yet victory is made sweeter when you know it came from within you, without violent retribution. The best revenge is to leave them mired in their hateful misery while you learn to bask in the warmth of self-esteem and happiness. Never forget that broken wings can and do heal in time, and that those scarred wings can carry the eagle to the top of the highest mountain.

since the Depression, we bankers have had the leisure and . . . solitude, you might say, to think about the future. The Civil War left us with a federal government. The Great War made us a creditor nation. As bankers, we must anticipate what changes this war will thrust upon us.” […] The old man leaned forward and took a long breath. “I see the rise of this country to a height no country has occupied, ever,” he said quietly. “Not the Romans. Not the Carolingians. Not Genghis Khan or the Tatars or Napoleon’s France. Hah! You’re all looking at me like I’ve one foot in the funny farm. How is that possible? you ask. Because our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.

It was a key – if not the key – turning point in the war because it meant that instead of the conflict being a European war which one day would escalate into a clash between Germany and Russia, it became a global conflict in which the Third Reich was unlikely to ever realistically emerge victorious. Britain’s defiance did save the world from Nazism.

INDECISION, n. The chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir Thomas Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers way to do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards" --a most clear and satisfactory exposition on the matter. "Your prompt decision to attack," said Genera Grant on a certain occasion to General Gordon Granger, "was admirable; you had but five minutes to make up your mind in." "Yes, sir," answered the victorious subordinate, "it is a great thing to be know exactly what to do in an emergency. When in doubt whether to attack or retreat I never hesitate a moment --I toss us a copper." "Do you mean to say that's what you did this time?" "Yes, General; but for Heaven's sake don't reprimand me: I disobeyed the coin.

Despite tribulation, distress, famine, peril, and sword, God had allowed them all to emerge as conquerors.

Charles learned that as long as he allowed himself to wallow in self-pity and bitterness, he was miserable and ineffective for Christ.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one sprite tumbling into a flower and emerging heavily dusted with carrot-coloured pollen. The other held up its glaive, victorious.

You must emerge from adversity, scathed but victorious to tell your story and, in turn, light the way for others.

To the people, Morel was the hero of a cause that had nothing to do with nations and political ideologies, a cause that had nothing to do with Africa and touched what was deepest in them — a secret rancor — a confused dream of being able one day to emerge victorious from the difficulty of being a man. They were staking a claim to respectful and decent treatment.

Saeed went with his father to pray on the first Friday after the curfew's commencement, and Saeed prayer for peace and Saeed's father prayed for Saeed and the preacher in his sermon urged all the congregants to pry for the righteous to emerge victorious in the war but carefully refrained from specifying on which side of the conflict he thought the righteous to be.

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war -- the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutiliated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.

So we had won after all...England would live...Once again in our long island history, we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious...No doubt it would take a long time ...

I like strong people. The ones who have gone through immense pain and hardened like a clay pot. They feel pain, but they smile. They faced problems and emerged victorious. Maybe, they lack materialistic things, but they are the ones with 'peace of mind' - one thing I long, everyone longs. I like strong people. The ones who have peace of mind. The ones who know not having things is ok.

Quantum cryptography would mark the end of the battle between codemakers and codebreakers, the codemakers emerging victorious, because quantum cryptography is a truly unbreakable system of encryption.

As you climb down the mountain, a disturbing emotion emerges in your soul! This is a sense of emptiness that comes from seeing that climbing to the top is not a great victory that glorifies or raises man!

She thought of the Allied airmen dropping the bombs, wondered if they knew what they were doing, who their bombs were killing. Were they war criminals, as most of the people in the air-raid shelter would testify? Or were things like accountability for war crimes decided by the victors? ...Those on the side that emerged victorious would likely be lauded as heroes, their crimes remembered as exemplary actions.

Potter' [...] 'Look at me. Yes, the business about the cat and rat and the broomsticks didn't help, and yes, I consider you my eternal rival and nemesis, locked forever in mortal combat from which only one can ever emerge victorious. But-' [...] ' But if you can try and understand that I have been trying with every fibre of my being to give you a family again, then maybe then you will understand how I feel about you.

Before you can see God’s purpose in trials, you must understand that whatever He is allowing in your life, He is using as a tool to achieve His ultimate goal of conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ. Although

That so all vapours of all disobedience to thee, being subdued under my feet, I may, in the power and triumph of thy Son, tread victoriously upon my grave, and trample upon the lion and dragon [182] that lie under it to devour me.

Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it’s those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials, or fractured by a permanent, damning fault line. <***> It’s not fiction, and there’s no escape. The walls between the human world and Faery are coming down—and I hate to break it to you, but these fairies are so not Tinkerbells. <***> I’ve seen things that would make your skin crawl. I’ve done things that make my skin crawl.

One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” 32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300 page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves—in other words, they just become better tyrants.

In games, the thing that matters most is the order of things. The game has an algorithm, but the player also must create a play algorithm in order to win. There is an order to any victory. There is an optimal way to play any game. Sam, in the silent months after Anna’s death, would obsessively replay this scene in his head. If she doesn’t take the job on Press That Button! and if Anna can’t afford to buy the new car. If Anna buys the new car but drives directly home after dinner. If the first Anna Lee doesn’t jump from that building and if Anna never comes to Los Angeles. If Anna doesn’t stop driving after she hits the coyote. If Anna finds the emergency lights. If Anna never sleeps with George. If Sam is never born. There are, he determines, infinite ways his mother doesn’t die that night and only one way she does.

The determining factor in the result of our trials is not the circumstances themselves but our reactions to them. If you retaliate to mistreatment, you give up control of yourself by allowing the hurt to dictate your reaction. Instead, allow responses to be controlled by God.

He had not Jim's racial prestige and the reputation of invincible, supernatural power. He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of unfailing truth and of unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and admired as he was, he was still one of them, while Jim was one of us. Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in himself, was invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed. Those unexpressed thoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the town, who elected to assemble in Jim's fort for deliberation upon the emergency, as if expecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white man.

He thinks that, even if you have a great idea, there have to be trials and tribulations, errors and failures, a dark night of the soul, a slog, a time in the desert, a fallow period, a period of quiet, a period of silent and earnest and frustrated toiling before emerging, victorious, into the sunshine and acclaim.

The world of 1906...was a stable and a civilized world in which the greatness and authority of Britain and her Empire seemed unassailable and invulnerably secure. In spite of our reverses in the Boer War it was assumed unquestioningly that we should always emerge "victorious, happy and glorious" from any conflict. There were no doubts about the permanence of our "dominion over palm and pine", or of our title to it. Powerful, prosperous, peace-loving, with the seas all round us and the Royal Navy on the seas, the social, economic, international order seemed to our unseeing eyes as firmly fixed on earth as the signs of the Zodiac in the sky.

This is a brilliant application of the Law: Use surrender to gain access to your enemy. Learn his ways, insinuate yourself with him slowly, outwardly conform to his customs, but inwardly maintain your own culture. Eventually you will emerge victorious, for while he considers you weak and inferior, and takes no precautions against you, you are using the time to catch up and surpass him. This soft, permeable form of invasion is often the best, for the enemy has nothing to react against, prepare for, or resist. And had Japan resisted Western influence by force, it might well have suffered a devastating invasion that would have permanently altered its culture.

Luke 10:19 tells us, “behold I give you power and authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and all over the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” We can operate as champions here on earth owing to the power and authority we have received. We can command the supernatural and emerge with victories without number.

My ideas about anti-Semitism also changed in the course of time, and this was my most difficult transformation... It cost me a great internal struggle, and it was only after a long battle between reason and sentiment that the former emerged victorious. Two years later, sentiment rallied to the side of reason and became its faithful guardian and advisor.

I like strong people. The ones who have gone through immense pain and hardened like a clay pot. They feel pain, but they smile. They faced problems and emerged victorious. Maybe, they lack materialistic things, but they are the ones with 'peace of mind.' One thing I long, everyone longs. I like strong people. The ones who have peace of mind. The ones who know not having things is OK.

Seven months after Grant’s death, Julia received a whopping $200,000 check from Twain and $450,000 in the end—an astonishing sum for book royalties at the time. No previous book had ever sold so many copies in such a short period of time, and it rivaled that other literary sensation of the nineteenth century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Clearly Grant had emerged victorious in his last uphill battle.

Heisenberg was not fond of the Nazi Party, but preferred a German victory in the conflict to the prospect of being run over by the Soviets. There is no evidence that he actively worked to sabotage the nuclear bomb program, but it is clear that his team made very little progress. In part that must be attributed to the fact that so many brilliant Jewish physicists had fled Germany as the Nazis took power.

The Allied victory in 1945 produced a tremendous shift of wealth and power, with the US emerging as the world’s dominant empire just as the British had after the Napoleonic Wars. The British were left with large debts, a huge empire that was more expensive to maintain than it was profitable, numerous rivals that were more competitive, and a population that had big wealth gaps that led to big political gaps.

Even death may prove unreal at last and stoics be astounded into heaven. Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned, Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind. That like the crocus budding through the snow, that like a swimmer rising from the deep, that like a burning secret which doth go. Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep, emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea and prove that death but routs life into victory.

Even death may prove unreal at last and stoics be astounded into heaven. Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned, Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind. That like the crocus budding through the snow, that like a swimmer rising from the deep, that like a burning secret which doth go. Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep, emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea and prove that death but routs life into victory.

yet that person will often emerge victorious thanks to sheer tenacity and lack of scruples, by dint of stratagems and spleen and concentration, because his sole objective in life is to harm his enemy, to bleed him dry and undermine him and then finish him off, woe betide anyone who acquires an enemy with those characteristics, however weak and needy he may seem; if you don’t have the time or the will to direct the same passionate loathing at him and to respond with equal intensity, you will end up succumbing, because you can’t afford to be distracted when fighting a war, regardless of whether that war is open or hidden or secret, nor to underestimate your stubborn opponent, even if you believe him to be innocuous and incapable of harming you or inflicting so much as a scratch: the reality is that anyone can destroy us, just as anyone can conquer us, and that is our essential fragility.

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges, Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies. I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet, Because I think that is sort of sweet; No, I object to one kind of apology alone, Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own. You go to their house for a meal, And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal; They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests, And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests; If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott, And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot; They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can, But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American. I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them, I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them, Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious, And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious, And what particularly bores me with them, Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them, So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

The America that emerged victorious from the Revolutionary War was a laboratory of political communication. By shaking off monarchical rule, the Republic had also forsaken all the rituals and emblems that created the aura surrounding the European thrones. No more sceptres and crowns; no more cathedral coronations and Te deums. To fill that vacuum, the United States created the cult of George Washington; and George Washington, in his turn, made Freemasonry into a patriotic liturgy.

We are often told, that in the critical periods of history it is the national soul which counts: that "where there is no vision, the people perish." No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge with soul unstained. If this be so, it becomes a part of true patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual citizen and of the social group, active and vigorous; its vision of realities unsullied by the entangled interests and passions of the time. This is a task in which all may do their part. The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised it he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers. It is therefore the function of a practical mysticism to increase, not diminish, the total efficiency, the wisdom and steadfastness, of those who try to practise it. It will help them to enter, more completely than ever before, into the life of the group to which they belong. It will teach them to see the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate them in a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on them an unconquerable hope; and assure them that still, even in the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.

Every man in the town set to work at once to repair the damage and no one had time to think of the meaning of the victory of the bridge, but going about his affairs in that ill-fated town in which the waters had destroyed or at least damaged everything, he knew that there was something in his life that overcame every disaster and that the bridge, because of the strange harmony of its forms and the strong and invisible power of its foundations, would emerge from every test unchanged and imperishable.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

Only under a polity in which all citizens enjoy equal rights—corresponding to the liberal ideal, which has nowhere ever been fully achieved—can there be political parties consisting of associations of persons who want to see their ideas on legislation and administration put into effect. For there can very well be differences of opinion concerning the best way to achieve the liberal aim of assuring peaceful social cooperation, and these differences of opinion must join issue as conflicts of ideas. Thus, in a liberal society there could be socialist parties too. Even parties that seek to have a special legal position conceded to particular groups would not be impossible under a liberal system. But all these parties must acknowledge liberalism (at least temporarily, until they emerge victorious) so far as to make use in their political struggles solely of the weapons of the intellect, which liberalism views as the only ones permissible in such contests, even though, in the last analysis, as socialists or as champions of special privileges, the members of the antiliberal parties reject the liberal philosophy.

A complete victory of society will always produce some sort of “communistic fiction,” whose outstanding political characteristic is that it is indeed ruled by an “invisible hand,” namely, by nobody. What we traditionally call state and government gives place here to pure administration—a state of affairs which Marx rightly predicted as the “withering away of the state,” though he was wrong in assuming that only a revolution could bring it about, and even more wrong when he believed that this complete victory of society would mean the eventual emergence of the “realm of freedom.

The pressure to get over, to forget, to wipe away the past, is often reinforced by one particular way of reading Christian redemption. The narrative of triumphant resurrection can often operate in such a way as to promise a radically new beginning to those who have experienced a devastating event. A linear reading of cross and resurrection places death and life in a continuum; death is behind and life is ahead; life emerges victoriously from death. This way of reading can, at its best, provide a sense of hope and promise for the future. But it can also gloss of the realities of pain and loss, glorify suffering, and justify violence.

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.

But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature’s ongoing rhythms. Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. Even the confrontation with disease should be approached with the realization that many of the sicknesses of our species are simply conveyances for the inexorable journey by which each of us is returned to the same state of physical, and perhaps spiritual, nonexistence from which we emerged at conception. Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end.

Sargon, the obscure adventurer who had emerged as though from nowhere to nurture this proud ambition, to extinguish the independence of neighboring city-states and to rule supreme over the “totality of the lands under heaven,” had always remained the model of a Mesopotamian strongman. Almost two thousand years after his foundation of Akkad, he remained the cynosure of great kings. Indeed, in the decades before the Persian conquest, the obsession with him had become a veritable craze. At Susa, the capital of Elam, a victory memorial originally inscribed by Sargon’s grandson had been lovingly dusted down and put on prominent display; in Akkad itself, when a statue of the great man was excavated, Nabonidus had come rushing in high excitement to inspect it, and to supervise its restoration. Museums had sprung up everywhere: at Ur, for instance, the antiquities collection maintained by Nabonidus’ daughter, Princess En-nigaldi-Nanna, had been carefully labeled and put on display for the edification of the public. Meanwhile, in Babylon itself, scholars pored over great libraries of archives, tracing ancient documents, recycling archaic phrases, looking to the distant past to legitimize the needs and whims of their masters. The people of Mesopotamia, living as they did amid the lumber of millennia, had always been profoundly respectful of antiquity. Rather than feeling oppressed by it, they recycled it, cannibalized it, and turned it to their advantage.

The new and real agencies of the learning machine are also literal-minded. If we program a machine for winning a war, we must think well what we mean by winning. A learning machine must be programmed by experience. The only experience of a nuclear war which is not immediately catastrophic is the experience of a war game. If we are to use this experience as a guide for our procedure in a real emergency, the values of winning which we have employed in the programming games must be the same values which we hold at heart in the actual outcome of a war. We can fail in this only at our immediate, utter, and irretrievable peril. We cannot expect the machine to follow us in those prejudices and emotional compromises by which we enable ourselves to call destruction by the name of victory.

We can have the moral courage, this time, to remind ourselves that major international violence us, in terms of the values our civilisation, a from of bankruptcy for us all, even for those who are confident that they are right; that all of us, victors and vanquished alike, must emerge from it poorer than we began it and farther from the goals we had in mind, and that, since victory or defeat can signify only relative degrees of misfortune, even the most glorious military victory would give us no right to face the future in any spirit other than one of sorrow and humbleness for what has happened and of realisation that the road ahead, toward a better world, is long and hard, longer and harder, in fact, than it would have been had it been possible to avoid a military cataclysm altogether.

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

Fukushima, Japan. The disaster involving the three General Electric–built reactors on the northeastern coast of Honshu followed a now familiar course, this time played out live on television: a loss of coolant led to reactor meltdown, a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas, and several catastrophic explosions. No one was killed or injured by the immediate release of radiation, but three hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area, which will remain contaminated for decades to come. During the early stages of the emergency cleanup, it became clear that robots were incapable of operating in the highly radioactive environment inside the containment buildings of the plant. Japanese soldiers were sent in to do the work, in another Pyrrhic victory of bio-robots over technology.

MUSSOLINI OBSERVED THAT IN SEEKING TO ACCUMULATE POWER, it is wise to do so in the manner of one plucking a chicken—feather by feather. His tactics live on in our no-longer-new century. When we awaken each morning, we see around the globe what appear to be Fascism’s early stirrings: the discrediting of mainstream politicians, the emergence of leaders who seek to divide rather than to unite, the pursuit of political victory at all costs, and the invocation of national greatness by people who seem to possess only a warped concept of what greatness means. Most often, the signposts that should alert us are disguised: the altered constitution that passes for reform, the attacks on a free press justified by security, the dehumanization of others masked as a defense of virtue, or the hollowing out of a democratic system so that all is erased but the label.

This generation grew up constantly reminded that they lived in the greatest country in the world, the land of the free, with liberty and justice for all its citizens. Yet, as they matured, members of this generation found a disturbing disparity between this popular American self-image and actual reality. They found that many people in this land—women and certain racial minorities—were, by law and custom, definitely not free. By the sixties the new generation was inspecting closely, and many were finding other disturbing aspects of the United States’ self-image—for instance, a blind patriotism that expected young people to go into a foreign land to fight a political war that had no clearly expressed purpose and no prospect of victory. Just as disturbing was the culture’s spiritual practice. The materialism of the previous four hundred years had pushed the mystery of life, and death, far into the background. Many found the churches and synagogues full of pompous and meaningless ritual. Attendance seemed more social than spiritual, and the members too restricted by a sense of how they might be perceived and judged by their onlooking peers. As the vision progressed, I could tell that the new generation’s tendency to analyze and judge arose from a deep-seated intuition that there was more to life than the old material reality took into account. The new generation sensed new spiritual meaning just beyond the horizon, and they began to explore other, lesser known religions and spiritual points of view. For the first time the Eastern religions were understood in great numbers, serving to validate the mass intuition that spiritual perception was an inner experience, a shift in awareness that changed forever one’s sense of identity and purpose. Similarly the Jewish Cabalist writings and the Western Christian mystics, such as Meister Eckehart and Teilhard de Chardin, provided other intriguing descriptions of a deeper spirituality. At the same time, information was surfacing from the human sciences—sociology, psychiatry, psychology, and anthropology—as well as from modern physics, that cast new light on the nature of human consciousness and creativity. This cumulation of thought, together with the perspective provided by the East, gradually began to crystallize into what was later called the Human Potential Movement, the emerging belief that human beings were presently actualizing only a small portion of their vast physical, psychological, and spiritual potential I watched as, over the course of several decades, this information and the spiritual experience it spawned grew into a critical mass of awareness, a leap in consciousness from which we began to formulate a new view of what living a human life was all about,

Instead, nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek and Communist armies under Mao Zedong battled for supremacy until 1949, when the Communists emerged victorious and the Nationalists withdrew to Taiwan. That same year Radio Beijing announced: ‘The People’s Liberation Army must liberate all Chinese territories, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Hainan and Taiwan.’ Mao centralised power to an extent never seen in previous dynasties. He blocked Russian influence in Inner Mongolia and extended Beijing’s influence into Mongolia. In 1951 China completed its annexation of Tibet (another vast non-Han territory), and by then Chinese school textbook maps were beginning to depict China as stretching even into the Central Asian republics. The country had been put back together; Mao would spend the rest of his life ensuring it stayed that way and consolidating Communist Party control in every facet of life, but turning away from much of the outside world. The country remained desperately poor, especially away from the coastal areas, but unified.

I had always felt that trust was the bedrock of any partnership, especially a business one. My associate and I had what I thought was a non-shakeable alliance. We would strategize; we would go to conferences about crypto and toast our wins with a glass of liquor. He was the only person I had trusted with my financial insight. Unfortunately, he was also the last person I should have trusted. WhatsApp info:+12723 328 343 I woke up one morning to the stuff of nightmares: I had absolutely no access to my Bitcoin wallet, holding $290,000. My password didn't work, my backup keys were useless, and my hardware wallet? Completely wiped. Panic set in as I tried to work out what was going on. Then, a chilling realization hit me. Only a week before, my ever-so-helpful colleague had made an offer to "optimize" my wallet security. I thought at that time, Wow, what a great guy. Well, it turns out he was great-at deception. The real gut punch? He had the audacity to sit across from me at work the next day, sipping coffee like nothing had happened. I confronted him, expecting some elaborate excuse, but he played dumb-so dumb it was insulting. That's when I knew what I needed were professionals, not empty denials. After hours of frantic research, I came across ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST. Their reputation in high-stakes crypto theft gave me hope. From the first conversation, they took my case seriously, breaking down the recovery process in a way that finally made sense. Their forensic team got to work tracking the stolen funds across multiple wallets. A few tense days later, I got the call: my money was back. Every single dollar. It turned out that my trusted colleague had tried to launder the funds through multiple transactions, but ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST untangled his mess with ease. The feeling of relief was overwhelming; I had prepared myself for the worst, yet I walked away victorious. My colleague probably had a pretty good inkling, because he quit before I could file any report. Typical. Some people just love to disappear rather than confront the music. Email info: Adware recovery specialist (@) auctioneer.net I emerged from that fiasco with my money still in one piece, and more painfully but preciously, with the lesson not to confuse control for kindness: you earn trust; you don't give it away freely-especially where money intervenes.

Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world, when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry asea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. This effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the Lake Rim cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough.

You already know what you know, after all—and, unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough. You remain threatened by disease, and self-deception, and unhappiness, and malevolence, and betrayal, and corruption, and pain, and limitation. You are subject to all these things, in the final analysis, because you are just too ignorant to protect yourself. If you just knew enough, you could be healthier and more honest. You would suffer less. You could recognize, resist and even triumph over malevolence and evil. You would neither betray a friend, nor deal falsely and deceitfully in business, politics or love. However, your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition—radically, fatally insufficient. You must accept this before you can converse philosophically, instead of convincing, oppressing, dominating or even amusing. You must accept this before you can tolerate a conversation where the Word that eternally mediates between order and chaos is operating, psychologically speaking. To have this kind of conversation, it is necessary to respect the personal experience of your conversational partners. You must assume that they have reached careful, thoughtful, genuine conclusions (and, perhaps, they must have done the work tha justifies this assumption). You must believe that if they shared their conclusions with you, you could bypass at least some of the pain of personally learning the same things (as learning from the experience of others can be quicker and much less dangerous). You must meditate, too, instead of strategizing towards victory. If you fail, or refuse, to do so, then you merely and automatically repeat what you already believe, seeking its validation and insisting on its rightness. But if you are meditating as you converse, then you listen to the other person, and say the new and original things that can rise from deep within of their own accord. It’s as if you are listening to yourself during such a conversation, just as you are listening to the other person. You are describing how you are responding to the new information imparted by the speaker. You are reporting what that information has done to you—what new things it made appear within you, how it has changed your presuppositions, how it has made you think of new questions. You tell the speaker these things, directly. Then they have the same effect on him. In this manner, you both move towards somewhere newer and broader and better. You both change, as you let your old presuppositions die—as you shed your skins and emerge renewed. A conversation such as this is one where it is the desire for truth itself—on the part of both participants—that is truly listening and speaking. That’s why it’s engaging, vital, interesting and meaningful. That sense of meaning is a signal from the deep, ancient parts of your Being. You’re where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You’re immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you’re stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform. There, you’re allowing new information to inform you—to permeate your stability, to repair and improve its structure, and expand its domain. There the constituent elements of your Being can find their more elegant formation. A conversation like that places you in the same place that listening to great music places you, and for much the same reason. A conversation like that puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that’s a real place. It leaves you thinking, “That was really worthwhile. We really got to know each other.” The masks came off, and the searchers were revealed. So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

This man is someone for whom the world isn’t a mystery. The world is a boulder, but it has levers and he knows when and where and how to apply just the right amount of force, and it moves for him, while my father and I, pushing up against it, don’t have any angle, any torque, no grip or traction or leverage. My father thinks success must be in direct proportion to effort exerted. He doesn’t know where or how to exert the least amount for the most gain, doesn’t know where the secret buttons are, the hidden doors, the golden keys. He thinks that, even if you have a great idea, there have to be trials and tribulations, errors and failures, a dark night of the soul, a slog, a time in the desert, a fallow period, a period of quiet, a period of silent and earnest and frustrated toiling before emerging, victorious, into the sunshine and acclaim. My father makes to-do lists, makes plans, makes business plans. This is how he starts, always with a blank sheet of graph paper. We make bullet points. We identify the key areas we need to research further. We try to figure out how to research those areas. We work in a vacuum. We work in his study. We ponder. We stare at our feet. We stare at the ceiling. We talk to each other, create a world, create a tiny, artificial, formal space, on a blank sheet of paper, where we can imagine rules and principles and categories and ideas, all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the actual world out there.

IF, O most illustrious Knight, I had driven a plough, pastured a herd, tended a garden, tailored a garment: none would regard me, few observe me, seldom a one reprove me; and I could easily satisfy all men. But since I would survey the field of Nature, care for the nourishment of the soul, foster the cultivation of talent, become expert as Daedalus concerning the ways of the intellect; lo, one doth threaten upon beholding me, another doth assail me at sight, another doth bite upon reaching me, yet another who hath caught me would devour me; not one, nor few, they are many, indeed almost all. If you would know why, it is because I hate the mob, I loathe the vulgar herd and in the multitude I find no joy. It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death. Through her virtue I envy not those who are bond though free, who grieve in the midst of pleasures, who endure poverty in their wealth, and a living death. They carry their chains within them; their spirit containeth her own hell that bringeth them low; within their soul is the disease that wasteth, and within their mind the lethargy that bringeth death. They are without the generosity that would enfranchise, the long suffering that exalteth, the splendour that doth illumine, knowledge that bestoweth life. Therefore I do not in weariness shun the arduous path, nor idly refrain my arm from the present task, nor retreat in despair from the enemy that confronteth me, nor do I turn my dazzled eyes from the divine end. Yet I am aware that I am mostly held to be a sophist, seeking rather to appear subtle than to reveal the truth; an ambitious fellow diligent rather to support a new and false sect than to establish the ancient and true; a snarer of birds who pursueth the splendour of fame, by spreading ahead the darkness of error; an unquiet spirit that would undermine the edifice of good discipline to establish the frame of perversity. Wherefore, my lord, may the heavenly powers scatter before me all those who unjustly hate me; may my God be ever gracious unto me; may all the rulers of our world be favourable to me; may the stars yield me seed for the field and soil for the seed, that the harvest of my labour may appear to the world useful and glorious, that souls may be awakened and the understanding of those in darkness be illumined. For assuredly I do not feign; and if I err, I do so unwittingly; nor do I in speech or writing contend merely for victory, for I hold worldly repute and hollow success without truth to be hateful to God, most vile and dishonourable. But I thus exhaust, vex and torment myself for love of true wisdom and zeal for true contemplation. This I shall make manifest by conclusive arguments, dependent on lively reasonings derived from regulated sensation, instructed by true phenomena; for these as trustworthy ambassadors emerge from objects of Nature, rendering themselves present to those who seek them, obvious to those who gaze attentively on them, clear to those who apprehend, certain and sure to those who understand. Thus I present to you my contemplation concerning the infinite universe and innumerable worlds.

For years before the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps won the gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he followed the same routine at every race. He arrived two hours early.1 He stretched and loosened up, according to a precise pattern: eight hundred mixer, fifty freestyle, six hundred kicking with kickboard, four hundred pulling a buoy, and more. After the warm-up he would dry off, put in his earphones, and sit—never lie down—on the massage table. From that moment, he and his coach, Bob Bowman, wouldn’t speak a word to each other until after the race was over. At forty-five minutes before the race he would put on his race suit. At thirty minutes he would get into the warm-up pool and do six hundred to eight hundred meters. With ten minutes to go he would walk to the ready room. He would find a seat alone, never next to anyone. He liked to keep the seats on both sides of him clear for his things: goggles on one side and his towel on the other. When his race was called he would walk to the blocks. There he would do what he always did: two stretches, first a straight-leg stretch and then with a bent knee. Left leg first every time. Then the right earbud would come out. When his name was called, he would take out the left earbud. He would step onto the block—always from the left side. He would dry the block—every time. Then he would stand and flap his arms in such a way that his hands hit his back. Phelps explains: “It’s just a routine. My routine. It’s the routine I’ve gone through my whole life. I’m not going to change it.” And that is that. His coach, Bob Bowman, designed this physical routine with Phelps. But that’s not all. He also gave Phelps a routine for what to think about as he went to sleep and first thing when he awoke. He called it “Watching the Videotape.”2 There was no actual tape, of course. The “tape” was a visualization of the perfect race. In exquisite detail and slow motion Phelps would visualize every moment from his starting position on top of the blocks, through each stroke, until he emerged from the pool, victorious, with water dripping off his face. Phelps didn’t do this mental routine occasionally. He did it every day before he went to bed and every day when he woke up—for years. When Bob wanted to challenge him in practices he would shout, “Put in the videotape!” and Phelps would push beyond his limits. Eventually the mental routine was so deeply ingrained that Bob barely had to whisper the phrase, “Get the videotape ready,” before a race. Phelps was always ready to “hit play.” When asked about the routine, Bowman said: “If you were to ask Michael what’s going on in his head before competition, he would say he’s not really thinking about anything. He’s just following the program. But that’s not right. It’s more like his habits have taken over. When the race arrives, he’s more than halfway through his plan and he’s been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension.”3 As we all know, Phelps won the record eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When visiting Beijing, years after Phelps’s breathtaking accomplishment, I couldn’t help but think about how Phelps and the other Olympians make all these feats of amazing athleticism seem so effortless. Of course Olympic athletes arguably practice longer and train harder than any other athletes in the world—but when they get in that pool, or on that track, or onto that rink, they make it look positively easy. It’s more than just a natural extension of their training. It’s a testament to the genius of the right routine.

Zap. Sports channel. Normal is nine innings, four balls, three strikes, somebody wins, somebody loses, there’s no such thing as a tie. Zap. Normal is unreal people, mostly rich unreal people, having sex with rappers and basketball players and thinking of their unreal family as a real-world brand, like Pepsi or Drano or Ford. Zap. News channels. Normal is guns and the normal America that really wants to be great again. Then there’s another normal if your skin color is the wrong color and another if you’re educated and another if you think education is brainwashing and there’s an America that believes in vaccines for kids and another that says that’s a con trick and everything one normal believes is a lie to another normal and they’re all on TV depending where you look, so, yeah, it’s confusing. I’m really trying to understand which this is America now. Zap zap zap. A man with his head in a bag being shot by a man without a shirt on. A fat man in a red hat screaming at men and women also fat also in red hats about victory, We’re undereducated and overfed. We’re full of pride over who the f*ck knows. We drive to the emergency room and send Granny to get our guns and cigarettes. We don’t need no stinkin’ allies cause we’re stupid and you can suck our dicks. We are Beavis and Butt-Head on ’roids. We drink Roundup from the can. Our president looks like a Christmas ham and talks like Chucky. We’re America, bitch. Zap. Immigrants raping our women every day. We need Space Force because Space ISIS. Zap. Normal is Upside-Down Land. Our old friends are our enemies now and our old enemy is our pal. Zap, zap. Men and men, women and women in love. The purple mountains’ majesty. A man with an oil painting of himself with Jesus hanging in his living room. Dead schoolkids. Hurricanes. Beauty. Lies. Zap, zap, zap. “Normal doesn’t feel so normal to me,” I tell him. “It’s normal to feel that way,” he replies.

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

The essence of deep and profound suffering, as articulated through the lens of individuals grappling with akathisia, reveals a universal truth about human resilience and the quest for meaning amidst adversity. Suffering, in its most unbearable forms, strips away the superficial layers of our existence, confronting us with the rawest facets of our being. It is in this crucible of despair that the depth of human strength is truly tested, and paradoxically, where the seeds of hope are sown. Throughout history, philosophers, poets, and survivors of great hardship have all echoed a similar sentiment: there is a profound transformation that occurs in the heart of suffering. It is not merely an ordeal to be endured but a powerful catalyst for growth and self-discovery. The pain that once seemed to diminish us eventually serves to expand our empathy, deepen our understanding of life's fragility, and enhance our appreciation for moments of joy and connection. In the narrative of overcoming akathisia, the raw and relentless nature of such suffering becomes a testament to the indomitable human spirit. This condition, characterized by an inner restlessness that can torment the mind and body, becomes a battleground upon which the battle for mental and emotional freedom is fought. The victory, hard-won, lies not in eradicating the condition but in mastering the art of resilience, in discovering that hope is not obliterated by despair but made more precious by it. To conclude, deep and profound suffering is an unyielding force, capable of either crushing the human spirit or refining it into something stronger and more beautiful. The choice of which direction we turn depends largely on our ability to find meaning in our pain, to reach out for support, and to believe in the possibility of regeneration. Like the phoenix rising from its ashes, individuals who traverse the dark night of the soul can emerge transformed, bearing the scars of their battles as badges of honor. These experiences whisper to us of the extraordinary resilience that resides within, urging us to keep moving forward, even when every step seems impossible. The power of the human spirit to transcend suffering reminds us that even in our darkest moments, there is always a path leading towards the light.

During the second half of the sixties, the center of the crisis shifted to the sprawling ghettos of the North. Here black experience was radically different from that in the South. The stability of institutional relationships was largely absent in Northern ghettos, especially among the poor. Over twenty years ago, the black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier was able to see the brutalizing effect of urbanization upon lower class blacks : ". . . The bonds of sympathy and community of interests that held their parents together in the rural environment have been unable to withstand the disintegrating forces in the city." Southern blacks migrated North in search of work, seeking to become transformed from a peasantry into a working class. But instead of jobs they found only misery, and far from becoming a proletariat, they came to constitute a lumpenproletariat, an underclass of rejected people. Frazier's prophetic words resound today with terrifying precision: ". . . As long as the bankrupt system of Southern agriculture exists, Negro families will continue to seek a living in the towns and cities of the country. They will crowd the slum areas of Southern cities or make their way to Northern cities, where their family life will become disrupted and their poverty will force them to depend upon charity." Out of such conditions, social protest was to emerge in a form peculiar to the ghetto, a form which could never have taken root in the South except in such large cities as Atlanta or Houston. The evils in the North are not easy to understand and fight against, or at least not as easy as Jim Crow, and this has given the protest from the ghetto a special edge of frustration. There are few specific injustices, such as a segregated lunch counter, that offer both a clear object of protest and a good chance of victory. Indeed, the problem in the North is not one of social injustice so much as the results of institutional pathology. Each of the various institutions touching the lives of urban blacks—those relating to education, health, employment, housing, and crime—is in need of drastic reform. One might say that the Northern race problem has in good part become simply the problem of the American city—which is gradually becoming a reservation for the unwanted, most of whom are black.

Then, on a left-hand curve 2.8 kilometres from the finish line, Marco delivers another cutting acceleration. Tonkov is immediately out of the saddle. The gap reaches two lengths. Tonkov fights his way back and is on Marco’s wheel when Marco, who is still standing on the pedals, accelerates again. Suddenly Tonkov is no longer there. Afterwards Tonkov would say he could no longer feel his hands and feet. ‘I had to stop. I lost his slipstream. I couldn’t go on.’ Marco told Romano Cenni he could taste blood. His performance on Montecampione was close to self-mutilation. Seven hundred metres from the finish line, the TV camera on the inside of the final right-hand bend, looking down the hill, picks Marco up over two hundred metres from the line and follows him for fifty metres, a fifteen-second close-up, grainy, pallid in the late-afternoon light. A car and motorbike, diffused and ghostlike, pass between the camera and Marco, emerging out of the gloom. The image cuts to another camera, tight on him as he swings round into the finishing straight, a five-second flash before the live, wide shot of the stage finish: Marco, framed between ecstatic fans on either side, and the finish-line scaffolding adorned with race sponsors‘ logos; largest, and centrally, the Gazzetta dello Sport, surrounded by branding for iced tea, shower gel, telephone services. Then we see it again in the super-slow-motion replay; the five seconds between the moment Marco appeared in the closing straight and the moment he crossed the finish line are extruded to fifteen strung-out seconds. The image frames his head and little else, revealing details invisible in real time and at standard resolution: a drop of sweat that falls from his chin as he makes the bend, the gaping jaw and crumpled forehead and lines beneath the eyes that deepen as Marco wrings still more speed from the mountain. As he rides towards victory in the Giro d‘Italia, Marco pushes himself so deeply into the pain of physical exertion that the gaucheness he has always shown before the camera dissolves, and — this must be the instant he crosses the line — he begins to rise out of his agony. The torso lifts to vertical, the arms spread out into a crucifix position, the eyelids descend, and Marco‘s face, altered by the darkness he has seen in his apnoea, lifts towards the light.

As Hamas’s rocket stockpiles dwindled, it reduced the number of rockets launched nightly but increased the range to Tel Aviv and beyond. Several of my conversations with Obama were interrupted by sirens. “Sorry, Barack,” I’d say. “I’m afraid we’ll have to resume our conversation in a few minutes.” With the rest of the staff I had forty-five seconds to go into underground shelters, returning after getting the all-clear sign. These live interruptions strengthened my argument for taking increasingly powerful actions against Hamas. And so we did. The IAF destroyed more and more enemy targets. Hamas panicked and became careless. Our intelligence identified the locations of their commanders. We targeted them and delivered painful blows to their hierarchy. Hamas then shifted their command posts to high-rises, believing they would be immune to our strikes. Using a technique called “knock on roof,” the air force fired nonlethal warning shots on the roofs of the buildings. Along with phone calls to the building occupants, these warnings enabled them to leave the premises unharmed. The IDF flattened several high-rise buildings with no civilian casualties. The sight of these collapsing towers sent Hamas a powerful message of demoralization and fear. This was literally “you can climb but you can’t hide.” Desperation was seeping through Hamas ranks. Arguments began to flare between Mashal in Qatar and the ground command in Gaza, which was suffering the brunt of our attacks. Eventually they caved. In the talks with Egypt they rescinded all their demands and agreed to an unconditional cease-fire that went into effect on August 26, 2014. After fifty days, Protective Edge was over. Sixty-seven IDF soldiers, five Israeli civilians, including one child, and a Thai civilian working in Israel lost their lives in the war. There were 4,564 rockets and mortars fired at Israel from Gaza, nearly all from civilian neighborhoods. The Iron Dome system intercepted 86 percent of them.4 The IDF killed 2,125 Gazans,5 roughly two-thirds of whom were members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terrorist groups. A third were civilians who were often used by the terrorists as human shields. Colonel Richard Kemp, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “the IDF took measures to limit civilian casualties never taken by any Western army in similar situations.” At least twenty-three Palestinian civilians were executed by Hamas over false accusations of colluding with Israel. In reality many had simply criticized the devastation of Gaza brought about by Hamas’s aggression against Israel.6 Hamas leaders emerged from their bunkers. Surveying the rubble, they predictably declared victory. This is what all dictatorships do. They are not accountable to the facts or to their people. Less predictably, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas admitted that Hamas was severely weakened and achieved none of its demands.7 With the

During the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, when northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. News rapidly spread about this remarkable young girl. With each victory, her reputation began to grow, until she became a folk heroine, rallying the French around her. French troops, once on the verge of total collapse, scored decisive victories that paved the way for the coronation of the new king. However, she was betrayed and captured by the English. They realized what a threat she posed to them, since she was a potent symbol for the French and claimed guidance directly from God Himself, so they subjected her to a show trial. After an elaborate interrogation, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen in 1431. In the centuries that followed, hundreds of attempts have been made to understand this remarkable teenager. Was she a prophet, a saint, or a madwoman? More recently, scientists have tried to use modern psychiatry and neuroscience to explain the lives of historical figures such as Joan of Arc. Few question her sincerity about claims of divine inspiration. But many scientists have written that she might have suffered from schizophrenia, since she heard voices. Others have disputed this fact, since the surviving records of her trial reveal a person of rational thought and speech. The English laid several theological traps for her. They asked, for example, if she was in God’s grace. If she answered yes, then she would be a heretic, since no one can know for certain if they are in God’s grace. If she said no, then she was confessing her guilt, and that she was a fraud. Either way, she would lose. In a response that stunned the audience, she answered, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” The court notary, in the records, wrote, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.” In fact, the transcripts of her interrogation are so remarkable that George Bernard Shaw put literal translations of the court record in his play Saint Joan. More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can’t help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. Some psychologists have speculated that a number of history’s prophets suffered from these temporal lobe epileptic lesions, since they were convinced they talked to God.

Yet let us reflect, where does the animal cease, where does man begin? — man, who is nature’s sole concern! As long as anyone desires life as he desires happiness, he has not yet raised his eyes above the horizon of the animal, for he only desires more consciously what the animal seeks through blind impulse. But that is what we all do for the greater part of our lives; usually we fail to emerge out of animality, we ourselves are the animals whose suffering seems to be senseless. But there are moments when we realize this: then the clouds are rent asunder, and we see that, in common with all nature, we are pressing towards something that stands high above us. In this sudden illumination we gaze around us and behind us with a shudder; we behold the more subtle beasts of prey and there we are in the midst of them. The tremendous coming and going of men on the great wilderness of the earth, their founding of cities and states their wars their restless assembling and scattering again, their confused mingling, mutual imitation, mutual outwitting and downtreading, their wailing in distress, their howls of joy in victory — all this is a continuation of animality; as though man was to be deliberately retrogressed and defrauded of his metaphysical disposition, indeed as though nature, after having desired and worked at man for so long, now drew back from him in fear and preferred to return to the unconsciousness of instinct. Nature needs knowledge and it is terrified of the knowledge it has need of; and so the flame flickers restlessly back and forth as though afraid of itself and seizes upon a thousand things before it seizes upon that on account of which nature needs knowledge at all. In individual moments we all know how the most elaborate arrangements of our life are made only so as to flee from the tasks we actually ought to be performing, how we would like to hide our head somewhere as though our hundred-eyed conscience could not find us out there, how we hasten to give our heart to the state, to money-making, to sociability or science merely so as no longer to possess it ourselves, how we labor at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself; universal too is the shy concealment of this haste because everyone wants to seem content and would like to deceive more sharp-eyed observers as to the wretchedness he feels; and also universal is the need for new tinkling word-bells to hang upon life and so bestow upon it an air of noisy festivity. Everyone is familiar with the strange condition in which unpleasant memories suddenly assert themselves and we then make great efforts, through vehement noise and gestures, to banish them from our minds: but the noise and gestures which are going on everywhere reveal that we are all in such a condition all the time, that we live in fear of memory and of turning inward. But what is it that assails us so frequently, what is the gnat that will not let us sleep? There are spirits all around us, every moment of our life wants to say something to us, but we refuse to listen to these spirit-voices. We are afraid that when we are alone and quiet something will be whispered into our ear, and so we hate quietness and deafen ourselves with sociability.

Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger. In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual’s life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transcendence. At a higher level we find sacred war-games; higher still, war itself. And this brings us back to the ancient Aryan concept of battle and the warrior ascetic. At the climax of danger and heroic battle, the possibility for such an extraordinary experience was recognized. The Lating ludere, meaning both 'to play' and 'to fight', seems to contain the idea of release. This is one of the many allusions to the inherent ability of battle to release deeply-buried powers from individual limitations and let them freely emerge. Hence the third comparison: the daimon, the Lar, the individualizing I, etc., are not only identical with the Furies, Erinyes, and other unleashed Dionysian natures, which themselves have many traits similar to the goddess of death — they are also synonymous with the storm maidens of battle, the Valkyries and Fravartis. In the texts, for example, the Fravartis are called 'the terrible, the all-powerful', 'those who attack in storm and bestow victory upon those who conjure them', or, more precisely, those who conjure them up in themselves. From there to the final comparison is only a short step. In the Aryan tradition the same martial beings eventually take on the form of victory-goddesses, a transformation which denotes the happy completion of the inner experience in question. Just as the daimon or doppelgänger signifies a deep, supra-individual power in its latent condition as compared to ordinary consciousness; just as the Furies and Erinyes reflect a particular manifestation of daimonic rages and eruptions (and the goddesses of death, Valkyries, Fravartis, etc., refer to the same conditions, as long as these are facilitated by battle and heroism) — in the same way the goddess of victory is the expression of the triumph of the I over this power. She signifies the victorious ascent to a state unendangered by ecstasies and sub-personal forms of disintegration, a danger that always lurks behind the frenetic moment of Dionysian and even heroic action. The ascent to a spiritual, truly supra-personal condition that makes one free, immortal, and internally indestructible, when the 'Two becomes One', expresses itself in this image of mythical consciousness.

# [Justin@TV] İstanbul Başakşehir Fenerbahçe Maçi canlı İzle 6.12.2025 by Vaqavy tv İstanbul Başakşehir vs Fenerbahçe Live Stream Free: How to Watch Turkish Super Lig Game Online From anywhere Arsenal faces a real test of its title credentials on Saturday as it travels to the West Midlands to take on the English Premier League's most in-form team, Aston Villa. The Gunners come into this match-up after a professional 2-0 dispatch of Brentford in Wednesday's London derby, thanks to an early Mikel Merino header and a second-half stoppage-time strike from Bukayo Sako. After a ponderous start to the season, Aston Villa is now flying, with a thrilling 4-3 comeback win over Brighton in midweek. That extended its winning streak to six victories across all competitions, with Unai Emery's men emerging as an outside threat to their visitors' title hopes. Arsenal has started to distance itself from the pack, and the club that has come close to finishing at the top of the mountain in recent years is doing its best to stay in first place. While it is just December, the Gunners are riding high in what has been an excellent start to their 2025-26 season. Though they managed to only grab a draw at Stamford Bridge on Sunday against Chelsea, Arsenal had a multi-game lead over Manchester City coming out of the weekend, having gone unbeaten in 11 straight EPL contests. The team has lost just once so far, that coming in late August against the defending champions, Liverpool. Arsenal is coming off a solid 2-0 win over Brentford on Wednesday. Arsenal enters Wednesday five points ahead of second-place Manchester City. Aston Villa has quietly maneuvered its way back into the top four. After a rather bumpy start to their season, the Lions have won four straight matches, including wild 4-3 win over Brighton last Wednesday, moving up to third in the table. Aston Villa performed brilliantly in midweek, fighting back from 2-0 down to eventually win 4-3 against Brighton at the Amex Stadium. Ollie Watkins was back amongst the goals with a brace, whilst Amadou Onana and Donyell Malen also grabbed a goal apiece. Arsenal saw off Brentford to remain top of the Premier League table, extending their unbeaten run to 18 games in the process. Goals from Mikel Merino and Bukayo Saka made sure of the victory, with Mikel Arteta's side going well so far. Arsenal goes into a busy Saturday in the Premier League with a five-point lead atop the league standings with a 10-3-1 record, 33 points and a league-best plus-20 goal differential. And while the club has taken a couple disappointing draws this season, Arsenal also hasn’t lost a match of any kind in over three months. That includes a perfect run in Champions League play, too, with a 5-0-0 mark in that competition to pace the field in points (15) and goal differential, netting 14 goals while allowing just one in five matches. The last time Arsenal lost was on Aug. 31 to reigning Premier League champion Liverpool, and the same can be said for Aston Villa on its current six-match win streak. Between UEFA Europa play and the Premier League, Villa is 6-0-0 over that stretch with a 15-5 scoring margin. That run of play stands in stark contrast to the club’s sluggish start, which included zero wins in six matches covering Premier League and Carabao Cup play. Speaking on Friday, the Spaniard said he was unsure whether Declan Rice, Cristhian Mosquera, William Saliba, or Leandro Trossard would be fit to feature. The door is ajar, then, for Unai Emery’s men to nick a win while the Gunners are not quite at full strength. Things are not so rosy for the hosts, though. Emi Martinez could stand to miss the match after he pulled out of the lineup to face Brighton with a back problem. Villa overcame his absence to eke out a narrow 4-3 victory at the AmEx Community Stadium, with Ollie Watkins’ brace ultimately making the difference. Last edited by vaqavy at Today 8:55 AM

At first glance, the story both Falwell and Harris tell seems like a plausible one. America is getting less religious. America’s youth—its future—are more irreligious still. The gays and the abortionists and the ACLU have won. The secularists have emerged, victorious, from the culture wars and salted the earth behind them. We’re all Nones now. Or, at least, eighty-one million of us are.

In Aikido, we train not to learn how to win; we train to learn to emerge victorious in any situation.

In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

In particular, we must examine the firm and growing conviction of the present author not only that libertarianism will triumph eventually and in the long run, but also that it will emerge victorious in a remarkably short period of time. For I am convinced that the dark night of tyranny is ending, and that a new dawn of liberty is now at hand.

To the principle of conjunction and reconciliation stands opposed the principle of disjunction and irreconcilability. From this confrontation the principle of irreconcilability always emerges triumphant, because by definition it can never give way to the principle of reconciliation. The same sort of thing happens in the case of Good and Evil. The Good consists in a dialectic of Good and Evil. Evil consists in the negation of this dialectic, in a radical dissociation of Good and Evil, and by extension in the autonomy of the principle of Evil. Whereas the Good presupposes a dialectical involvement of Evil, Evil is founded on itself alone, in pure incompatibility. Evil is thus master of the game, and it is the principle of Evil, the reign of eternal antagonism, that must eventually carry off the victory. When it comes to radical otherness between beings, sexes or cultures, we find the same kind of antagonism as in the case of Evil, the same logic of definitive incomprehensibility, the same bias in favour of foreignness. Is it possible, then, to join forces with this foreignness? The answer is no, because of the theorem which may be advanced, by analogy with the behaviour of heavenly bodies, according to which bodies and minds are forever drawing farther and farther away from each other. This hypothesis of an endless process of excommunication, which subsumes the notion of an indissoluble curse, is also, precisely, the hypothesis of the transparency of Evil - as opposed to the universal utopia of communication. A hypothesis, therefore, that is everywhere contradicted by the facts. But only apparently so, for in reality the more things seem to become orientated towards universal comprehension and universal homogenization, the more unavoidable becomes the idea of an eternal irreducibility whose ineradicable presence is easier to sense than to analyse. This presence imposes itself as the brute fact, as the irresistible, suprasensory, supranatural reality which is thrown up as a figure of fatality by the impossibility of a dialectical theory of difference. A kind of universal force of repulsion confronting the official universal force of attraction.

Then help us, old man. I don’t have much time.” “I see you’re more straightforward and down-to-earth than your brother…” “You know my brother?” “Yes, I know him. Our paths have crossed several times.” “So, will you help us, then?” “I’ll make you a proposition, young Hero, as I did to your brother before he set off to rescue you from the Eternal City. I’ll help you in exchange for your help in the difficult days which are coming. Unfortunately that’s the way things work in this ungrateful world…” “What do you want of me?” Kyra asked. There was distrust in her narrowed eyes. “The message of freedom already flies high, like an eagle: unstoppable, majestic, over fields, villages and cities of the Six Counties. It’s a message of hope, of a dream the Senoca had lost and are now regaining little by little. It’s been a long hard effort organizing ourselves so that this rumor can reach the peasant, the farmer, the woodcutter, the miner, the shepherd, the apothecary, the craftsman, the people, every one of the Senoca. And we’re succeeding.” “What does that have to do with me?” “What’s enabled the message to spread so quickly and reach so many is the appearance of the Heroes who have defied the Gods in their own dwelling and emerged victorious. You are a symbol for the people. You represent what they wish to be, but which their defeated and fearful spirits will not let them be. At night they dream of being Heroes, but fear overcomes them by day.” “I still don’t know why you need me.” The stranger gave a bitter laugh. “Youth gives us energy, courage,

As long as we are sheep, we overcome and, though surrounded by countless wolves, we emerge victorious; but if we turn into wolves, we are overcome, for we love the shepherd’s help. He, after all, feeds the sheep not wolves, and will abandon you if you do not let him show his power in you.

The first place to look for the answers is not in the legs or the arms but the head, “the most fragile part of the body,” in Forcades’s words, and the most decisive in determining victory or defeat in elite sports, especially in an individual sport like tennis. “Tennis is all about resolving emergencies, one emergency after another over a prolonged period of time. No point is ever the same, and decisions have to be taken constantly in fractions of seconds.

Britain had emerged victorious from two decades of war appended to a century of war, only to find herself fantastically in debt and ruled by a buffoon. The populace that had made endless sacrifices in the name of patriotism was now deeply discontent for many of the same reasons that had fueled revolution in France.

Unfurl your banner of resilience, for the greatest victories emerge from acknowledging and conquering the adversaries within. Yes, confront your weaknesses head-on on the battlefield of self-improvement.

Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

Schumer was too anxious to revel in his first victory. He needed to see Nancy Pelosi, to let her know about his deal with Manchin. A year earlier, Pelosi felt blindsided by Schumer when he failed to tell her about how he signed a surreptitious agreement with the West Virginia senator. Now, he was ready to spring a much happier surprise on her, although he wasn’t sure how she would respond to Manchin’s demands, which he worried might irk Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades on the Left. But Schumer couldn’t relay his revelation to Pelosi, because he couldn’t reach her. She was in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, receiving a briefing on Ukraine, without access to a cell phone. When she finally emerged, Schumer trekked to her office. It came as an enormous relief that she didn’t think twice about agreeing to Schumer’s side deals with Manchin. Schumer asked her to call the West Virginia senator to relay her assent.

The socialist planning system had a number of important achievements to its credit. It introduced mass production into Soviet industry. It greatly increased the output of a number of key industrial sectors, such as oil and steel. It produced the huge number of weapons necessary to emerge victorious from World War II. It provided full employment. It produced the world’s first earth satellite. It invested heavily in human capital. Its educational system (except in the social sciences) was good by international standards, and produced large numbers of qualified people. During the 1950s the USSR enjoyed a golden age with growth rates much in excess of those in the USA or UK. However, socialist planning also had a number of problems. These included: shortages of consumer goods; inability to take full advantage of the world market for goods, capital and people; slow home-grown technical progress; and living standards that lagged behind those in capitalist countries. In addition, the high growth rates of the 1950s gradually declined.

Whenever the heart, by God’s grace in the soul, emerges out of turmoil into God’s victory and God is glorified, the person, too, is glorified. One has new strength to give new assents, and one also has a new understanding of the great fruit that comes out of dying, experiencing in one’s own self what it is to come into the radiance of God out of the dark turmoil of human weakness. And so the person is glorified. There is a new strength, a new understanding.

Stay offline if you must, and do whatever is reasonable enough to thrive. Stay focused and emerge victorious in life.

This is more than a fight for survival; it's a quest for vengeance. And as we delve into the shadowy depths, I know that we will emerge victorious or not at all.

When all of humanity stirs under the spell of a word, often not understood by anyone in the same way, when, captivated by a new idea, nations rise as one and rush onto the battlefields where the future is almost always decided in a way not in harmony with the desires of those who gave the signal, even if they emerge victorious, it is because Providence leads grand designs to their fruition while keeping them concealed. Its action, unfolding in time, is slow, solemn, majestic, and irresistible because it emanates from eternity. Man sets himself a goal, thinking he can attain it in a day or a year; he dies without reaching it. Or if he manages to touch it, he soon realizes that it was merely a stage in the progressive march of humanity,

Tell me, Amy, how did you get this sourpuss to settle down? Between you and me, I think we had a silent game of chicken going to see who would get married first. You have my gratitude for allowing me to emerge victorious.” Amy laughed, the sound a balm for my battered soul. “It was challenging, but I can truthfully say it was all his idea.

Those who emerge victorious, those who know the joy of release defeat despair by declaring the emancipation from within, sometimes at the top of their lungs, where freedom rings and reigns supreme.

Despite the damage he sustains, Horus emerges victorious. It is of vital importance to reiterate, in light of this victory, the fact that he enters the battle voluntarily. It is a maxim of clinical intervention—a consequence of observation of improvement in mental health across many schools of practical psychological thought—that voluntary confrontation with a feared, hated, or despised obstacle is curative.

The war has made me suspicious of any metaphors (and not only because poets turned into murderers). I put even less faith in metaphors derived from religious mythology: things belonging to “that” world, a world that can only be reached by passing through death, no longer concern the living. Thus, all responsibility for the commission of evil can be abdicated. If you follow through on this metaphor—and that is why it always made me uncomfortable—then you can remove any trace of responsibility from Karadžić’s hellish acts. That is how, to put it mildly, lies emerged victorious—and were measured out in drums of “non-Serbian” blood. Lies were the only political means in which Radovan Karadžić had absolute faith. Since everything he did in the name of racial “cleanliness” created a fact, so to speak—he was creating a reality to fit his lies—all he had left to do was keep repeating the lies until his accumulated acts made his lies seem irrefutable. Maybe that’s why it became so easy for so many of our “neighbors” to put stockings over their heads. The claim most often repeated by Karadžić—that people of different nationalities couldn’t live together in Bosnia—was simply a euphemism for racism. The truth was quite the opposite: peoples of different cultures had lived together for so long in Bosnia, and the ethnic mix was so deep, that any separation could only be accomplished through extreme violence and enormous bloodshed.

However, even emerging victorious doesn’t cultivate character; it merely grants a momentary opportunity to bask in glory.

A fat man in a red hat screaming at men and women also fat also in red hats about victory, We’re undereducated and overfed. We’re full of pride over who the f*ck knows. We drive to the emergency room and send Granny to get our guns and cigarettes. We don’t need no stinkin’ allies cause we’re stupid and you can suck our dicks. We are Beavis and Butt-Head on ’roids. We drink Roundup from the can. Our president looks like a Christmas ham and talks like Chucky. We’re America, bitch. Zap. Immigrants raping our women every day. We need Space Force because Space ISIS. Zap. Normal is Upside-Down Land. Our old friends are our enemies now and our old enemy is our pal. Zap, zap. Men and men, women and women in love. The purple mountains’ majesty. A man with an oil painting of himself with Jesus hanging in his living room. Dead schoolkids. Hurricanes. Beauty. Lies. Zap, zap, zap.

Warriors of Thezmarr,’ Hawthorne called again. ‘The destiny that awaits us amidst the rubble is one of glory, should you want it enough. Rage with me, rage against the darkness and emerge victorious protectors of the midrealms once more.

As many scholars today agree, the biblical notion of covenant emerged in direct response to Israel’s and Judah’s experience of political subjugation and defeat. However, the authors of the Pentateuch have concealed those origins. Indeed, texts like explicitly link the covenant not to defeat but to a great victory over the nation’s first imperial oppressors.

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.

All studies in which the origins of thought point beyond themselves to deeper origins are sacred studies. Those we call teachers may or may not be teachers. Those around whom surprising thinking emerges are teachers.

That’s when things began to unravel. By the time he fully revealed himself to me, it was too late. He had used my vulnerability to his advantage, like a general armed for battle. His weapons were kindness, attention, and compassion—and when victory was assured, he discarded them like spent casings, and his true nature emerged. Jackson

On the evening before the Battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon and a few of his officers were riding past a pyramid. A man wrapped in a red cloak stepped out of the pyramid and motioned to Napoleon to come forth. Napoleon obliged, telling his officers to wait outside as he stepped into the pyramid with this red-mantled stranger. After an hour of uneasiness, the officers were ready to enter and ensure Napoleon’s safety, but Napoleon stepped out of the pyramid. With a satisfied smile, he demanded they prepare for battle with the Egyptians. The officers were confused, given his previous reluctance, but they followed his orders, leading to their victory in the Battle of the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza The year after his invasion, Napoleon returned to Egypt, to the Great Pyramid of Giza. After discovering the Rosetta Stone—an ancient stone that helped scientists to understand how to read hieroglyphics—Napoleon began to believe that the pyramids held great mystique and spirituality. He spent the night inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, inside the king’s chamber that was about 32 feet long and 16 feet wide. For seven hours, he sat in the dark room, not emerging until sunrise. However, when he stepped out of the pyramid, his face was pale. Visibly shaken and terrified, he refused to tell anyone what he’d experienced, saying, “If I told you the truth, you would not believe me.” Even years later, when one of Napoleon’s men asked about the experience, Napoleon considered telling him but then decided against it, saying, “No, never mind” (Shkuro, 2019, para. 2). Considering Napoleon admired Alexander the Great, who had also spent the night in the king’s chambers and had an experience, some believe he may have been trying to claim a piece of Alexander’s legacy in that respect. He’s even been said to have created stories about himself that aligned with Alexander. Though, even his officers said he was clearly disturbed by whatever he saw.

But the Byzantines knew that there was no end, that new enemies would emerge if the old were utterly defeated, and there was an even chance that they might be as dangerous or more dangerous. In that case, the enemy fleet left undestroyed might be useful, for the newcomers might be as threatening to the old enemy as to the empire. It was the same on land, where to destroy one enemy pressing against the imperial frontiers would merely leave a vacant space for the next enemy to threaten imperial borders. Therefore the purpose of war for the Byzantines could not be to seek battle for decisive victory, for there was no such thing, but only to contain immediate threats by weakening the enemy with expedients, ruses of war, and ambushes, leaving any form of two-sided large-scale combat as only a last resort. That is the strategic context of this, as of every piece of serious Byzantine military writing.

Antisthenes was not the first to differ significantly from the Hesiodic assessment of work. Rather, his proposition that ponos is a good rather than an unwelcome punishment was preceded by the emergence of an "industrious optimism" especially after the late fifth century. Optimistic man sets himself above environmental forces and asserts himself in the world as an indomitable force. Rather than accepting a god-given lot, he dares to "take fate by the throat." Rather than plodding the old furrows, he strikes out in a new direction, gives himself new tasks, implements his own plans, accepts his own failures. Some are more driven than others. The most ambitious impose upon themselves the greatest tasks and work incessantly for success. Some terrible restlessness goads these imperialists on, and as they hunt victory relentlessly they stamp down the weak and scoff at talk of justice. What do they want? It is hard to tell, since no success seems to satisfy them. Each triumph inspires new undertakings, each disaster resilient hope. They seem to toil on without end, as if human desire itself were infinite.

Steve Bannon, for example, is an alt-right hero to the pro-Trump white working class. Bannon rose from Breitbart News editor to running Trump’s victorious 2016 presidential campaign. From there he became Trump’s White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor. His politics derive from his father’s experience losing his life savings during the 2008 financial crisis. According to Bannon, the elites (inside and outside American government) who built the global capitalist system emerged from the wreckage unscathed—often even richer—while working-class heroes like his father were decimated. Bannon doesn’t hide his intent: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” These sentiments, more than anything else, explain the Trump phenomenon. For what better vessel is there in the entire world for accomplishing this goal—for bringing everything crashing down—than Donald J. Trump? That’s why Trump’s behavior in office was okay. That’s why his lies about the election are just fine. That’s why the January 6 riot didn’t matter. Not because Trump’s base thinks those things are good for America … but because they know those things are bad for America. Trump has come. And he will go. But what does it say about the underlying state of the American polity that a politician whose central platform is lying about elections is the unrivaled champion of one of the two major political parties? Something broad and deep is afoot. Something pernicious. Something likely to last.

Love knows no boundaries, it can overcome any obstacle, weather any storm, and emerge victorious on the other side.

If Francis dies before real reform happens—and if his successor proves unwilling or unable to carry on his initiative—then Opus Dei will emerge from its near-death experience invigorated and defiant. Revitalized, backed by its army of donors, the movement will plow forward with its plans to re-Christianize the planet, whether that’s what people want or not. Gay marriage, secular education, scientific research, and the arts will fast become its next targets. Given its supporters’ unexpected victory over abortion, it’s quite possible that Opus Dei and its sympathizers could mastermind equally devastating victories in those areas.

The Buddha likened humans to the lotus flowers. Out of the deluded mud of human existence, filled with greed, hatred, and delusion, in a world where wars, oppression, and lust rule the masses, there are those who can and will rise above the muck and emerge victorious against suffering.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Vietnam war from the Army's point of view is that as far as logistics and tactics were concerned we succeeded in everything we set out to do. At the height of the war the Army was able to move almost a million soldiers a year in and out of Vietnam, feed them, clothe them, house them, supply them with arms and ammunition, and generally sustain them better than any Army had ever been sustained in the field. To project an Army of that size halfway around the world was a logistics and management task of enormous magnitude, and we had been more that equal to the task. On the battlefield itself, the Army was unbeatable. In engagement after engagement the forces of the Viet Cong and that of the North Vietnamese Army were thrown back with terrible losses. Yet, in the end, it was North Vietnam, not the United States, that emerged victoriously. How could we have succeeded so well, yet failed so miserably? At least part of the answer appears to be that we saw Vietnam as unique rather than in strategic context. This misperception grew out of neglect of military strategy in the post-World War II nuclear era. Almost all professional literature on military strategy was written by civilian analysts - political scientists from the academic world and systems analysts from the Defense community. In his book War and Politics, political scientist Bernard Brodie devoted an entire chapter to the lack of professional military strategic thought. The same criticism was made by systems analysts Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith who commented: "Military professionals are among the most infrequent contributors to the basic literature on military strategy and defense policy. Most such contributors are civilians..." Even the Army's so-called "new" strategy of flexible response grew out of civilian, not military, thinking. This is not to say that the civilian strategies were wrong. The political scientists provided a valuable service in tying war to its political ends. They provided a valuable service in tying war to its political ends. The provided answers to "why" the United States ought to wage war. In the manner the systems analyst provided answer on "what" means we would use. What was missing was the link that should have been provided by military strategists -"how" to take the systems analyst's means and use them to achieve the political scientist's ends. But instead of providing professional military advice on how to fight the war, the military more and more joined with the systems analysts in determining material means we were to use. Indeed, the conventional wisdom among many Army officers was that "the Army doesn't make strategy, " and "there is no such thing as Army strategy." There was a general feeling that strategy was budget-driven and was primarily a function of resource allocation. The task of the Army, in their view, was to design and procure material, arms and equipment and to organize, train, and equip soldiers for the Defense Establishment.

Kalka the Mongols scored a great victory, but for some reason they withdrew, only to return with a larger force in 1237. THE EMERGENCE OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE In several respects, the Mongol empire, one of the greatest in world history, remains an enigma to historians. It is hard to explain how one million people succeeded in imposing their rule over one hundred million in a huge area stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic coast, from China to Hungary.

The truth is that God has appointed each member in the body as He wills. As you grow in intimacy with God, your passions will emerge. But don’t assume that the passion God gives you is the passion God expects of everyone. God has gifted you and appointed you as He sees fit for the purpose of edifying the body. Your calling (and my calling) is not to heap guilt upon those who do not experience what we are experiencing, but to edify the body in love as God gives us the opportunity.

After Shivaji's death in 1680, and with the investiture of his grandson Shahu in 1708, a far-sighted Brahmin, Balaji Visvanath, emerged as his principal adviser. Impressed by his qualities of statesmanship, Shahu conferred the title of Peshwa or Prime Minister on him. Balaji not only restored the rule of law which had been in disarray since Shivaji's death but succeeded in getting the Mughal ruler in Delhi to recognize his master as the independent ruler of his grandfather Shivaji's territories. Some regard Balaji as the second founder of the Maratha Empire. After Balaji's death in 1720, a grateful Shahu – despite the resentment of Maratha nobles against growing Brahmin ascendancy – invested Balaji's son, Baji Rao, as the Peshwa. Even more ambitious and far-sighted than his father, Baji Rao decided to point the Marathas north, to the very seat of the Mughals. Their victories and territorial acquisitions shook the Mughal Empire to its foundations and when Baji Rao died in 1740, his son Balaji Baji Rao was also made Peshwa by Shahu. After Shahu's death nine years later, Balaji Baji Rao staged the ultimate coup d' état by seizing all powers himself. This was a departure from the Brahminical élite's preference for the number two position in the power hierarchy, not only because of the influence, status and wealth it brought, but, more importantly, because it enabled a versatile man, well-versed in statecraft, to exercise power without the danger or ridicule the top position attracts. Moreover, the top man is accountable for all his actions, which the man behind the throne is not.

This is not what I had planned for dessert, Louisa Windham.” Sir Joseph murmured the words near Louisa’s ear, though she was too enchanted with the feel of his weight above her to argue. “I’ve never wrestled with a grown man before.” “You had the element of surprise to aid you. When you are my wife, I will not be so easily subdued as to end up on my own hearth rug, regardless of the astonishing pleasures to be found there.” Louisa concluded she’d subdued him thoroughly, for he did not move off her where she lay on that rug. “Joseph, did you just use your tongue—?” “I’m tasting you, seeing if you savor of the Christmassy scent you’ve teased my nose with on so many occasions.” His voice had taken on a purring quality, the sound of it curling straight down beneath Louisa’s belly to places low and sweet. “I believe I will enjoy being married to you, sir.” “Hush.” He traced the curve of her ear with his nose, which made her shiver wonderfully. “I’m wrestling with my conscience—and, madam, I intend to emerge victorious from at least one struggle this evening—though be assured you shall enjoy certain parts of being married to me a great deal.” “One hoped that would be the—oh, Joseph…” He’d shifted, wedged his body more tightly into hers so she could feel his arousal. “The lady falls silent. Surely, the season of miracles is upon us.” Louisa

In his most thrilling military victory to date, Napoleon had defeated an Ottoman force eighteen thousand men strong at Aboukir. It had been Javert’s first real taste of battle, watching cannon fire blow ships into splinters and hearing the last screams of drowning men. The French army, stinking and spluttering with plague, had emerged victorious but exhausted. They had taken refuge in Alexandria, though it hardly felt safe. Very recently, Napoleon had left with a few of his nearest friends for a voyage into the Delta. Now Javert was just one of the confused mass left reeling in the wake of the chaos.

Then there is the conversation where one participant is trying to attain victory for his point of view. This is yet another variant of the dominance-hierarchy conversation. During such a conversation, which often tends toward the ideological, the speaker endeavours to (1) denigrate or ridicule the viewpoint of anyone holding a contrary position, (2) use selective evidence while doing so and, finally, (3) impress the listeners (many of whom are already occupying the same ideological space) with the validity of his assertions. The goal is to gain support for a comprehensive, unitary, oversimplified world-view. Thus, the purpose of the conversation is to make the case that not thinking is the correct tack. The person who is speaking in this manner believes that winning the argument makes him right, and that doing so necessarily validates the assumption-structure of the dominance hierarchy he most identifies with. This is often—and unsurprisingly—the hierarchy within which he has achieved the most success, or the one with which he is most temperamentally aligned. Almost all discussions involving politics or economics unfold in this manner, with each participant attempting to justify fixed, a priori positions instead of trying to learn something or to adopt a different frame (even for the novelty). It is for this reason that conservatives and liberals alike believe their positions to be self-evident, particularly as they become more extreme. Given certain temperamentally-based assumptions, a predictable conclusion emerges—but only when you ignore the fact that the assumptions themselves are mutable.

The meaning of life is a personal definition, as unique as the individual; that meaning will emerge during one’s lifetime as the major quest for fulfillment, something to act on that will give value to one’s life and leave behind as their greatest legacy.” Victorious Faith In Jesus Christ: Creates Good Christian Conduct by Joan Jessalyn Cox

Before she could study the damage, Zane grabbed her by her arm and pulled her to her feet. He took her hand in his and examined the injury. Several things occurred to her at once. First--that they’d never stood this close together before. He was so big, tall and broad that he made her feel positively delicate by comparison. Second--for a man who had spent his morning on a horse, he smelled really good. All clean and woodsy. Third--the instant his fingers touched her, the pain miraculously vanished. Talk about amazing. “Skin’s not broken,” he said as he turned over her hand. “Tell me if this hurts.” He bent her fingers back and forth. His warmth sent sizzling jolts of awareness slip-sliding all through her body. Despite the heat filling her, something was wrong with her lungs because it was impossible to breathe. He touched her gently, as if he didn’t want to hurt her. The logical part of her brain turned cynical, announcing that he was simply concerned about a lawsuit by a goat-bitten city girl. The romantic side of her suddenly understood all those country songs about cowboys. What was it that country star Lacey Mills had sung? “Go ahead, cowboy. Rope me in.” It was a brief battle, with romance emerging victorious.

attacked in the darkness by unknown assailants, directly leading to Punk pinning Rock; the announcers blamed the Shield for the attack. The match was later restarted with Rock winning. The next day on Raw, the Shield attacked and laid out John Cena; Sheamus and Ryback suffered the same fate when they attempted to save Cena. Later in the show, it was revealed through footage played by Vince McMahon that Punk and/or his manager Paul Heyman had been paying the Shield and Brad Maddox to work for them all along. This set up a six-man tag team match at Elimination Chamber, which the Shield won. At WrestleMania 29, The Shield made victims of Randy Orton, Sheamus & Big Show in what was The Show of Shows debut of "The Hounds of Justice." The following night on Raw, The Shield attempted to attack The Undertaker but were stopped by Team Hell No. This set up a six-man tag team match on the April 22 episode of Raw, where The Shield emerged victorious. Four days later on SmackDown, Ambrose made his singles debut against Undertaker but lost via submission, after which the Shield attacked Undertaker and triple-powerbombed him through the announcer's table. On the May 3 episode of SmackDown, Ambrose defeated Kane in a singles match. On May 19 at Extreme Rules, Ambrose defeated Kofi Kingston to win the WWE United States Championship, his first singles title in WWE, while Rollins and Reigns won the WWE Tag Team Championships later that night. Ambrose made his first televised title defense on the following episode of SmackDown, retaining his title when he was disqualified due to the rest of the Shield's interference. Three days later on Raw, Ambrose defeated Kingston again to retain his title. At WWE Payback, Ambrose defeated Kane via

Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it’s those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials, or fractured by a permanent, damning fault line.

His weapons were kindness, attention, and compassion—and when victory was assured, he discarded them like spent casings, and his true nature emerged.

Because our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.

Saeed went with his father to pray on the first Friday after the curfew's commencement, and Saeed prayed for peace and Saeed's father prayed for Saeed and the preacher in his sermon urged all the congregants to pry for the righteous to emerge victorious in the war but carefully refrained from specifying on which side of the conflict he thought the righteous to be.

The testimony is followed by another montage of Team Impact feats of strength. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” an amped up announcer voice a la Monster Truck Rally proclaims, “We are Team Impaaaaact. Standing on faith tonight let’s give it up for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one, the only, the Risen Warrioooooor!” Are they talking about Jesus? Is he a cage fighter or the Lamb of God? If ever there was a cross-denying tribute to a theology of glory, it would be Team Impact. As is the case with the rest of TBN, the scandal of Jesus’ birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection are ignored entirely in favor of a Jesus-as-Rambo theology; here the Lord just kicks ass and takes names, much like the freakishly muscular Team Impact guys. Taking one’s Christology from a couple of chapters of Revelation (ignoring the central Christ image, that of the Lamb who was slain) rather than the gospels is baffling to me. I recently saw an “inspirational” self-mocking emerging church poster. The word “incarnational” rested below an image of a heavily tattooed guy wearing a crown of thorns made of barbed wire. The caption read “What would Jesus do? I’m pretty sure he’d do stuff I think is cool.” We all wish to make Christ in our own image because the truth of a God who dies is too much. We’ll believe anything but that, and if that anything happens to bring us power and victory and glory then all the better.

Of the people I know who detest their jobs most, all are stuck in this position. It is their job to implement bad decisions made by others. It is their job to take responsibility for things that are not their fault. They can neither move up, nor move back down. They are more buffeted by storms of office politics than anyone else. It is not pretty. The true problem is not at the top. It is at the bottom. It is how you persuade decent, hardworking people that it is worth trying to advance. Given how bad the journey upward looks, it is no surprise that the people who embark on it and emerge victorious at the top are so often bent out of shape. Meanwhile some of the people who might have fared better at the top remain at the bottom, having wisely declined to climb at all.

The battlefield is a perfect backdrop, but the Gita’s subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious.

The degree of effort our Lord asks to keep his disciples afloat in the face of a difficult situation may vary from time to time, but the remedies are the same for all throughout history: intensify prayer; be more sincere and docile in spiritual direction; flee from dangerous occasions; obey promptly and with docility of heart; together with prayer, use the human means – however small – we have available ... With Christ, in all battles, we will emerge victorious, but we need to have complete confidence in him. Pray resolutely, using the words of the Psalmist: ‘Thou Lord, art my refuge and my strength. I trust in thee.

the Americans wanted to emerge victorious from this conflict, they would not try to overpower their enemy; they would simply refuse to back down or go away. They didn’t need to be conquering heroes—they just needed to survive.

She used to compete with Edward to determine the prettier creation, and she always emerged victorious. But in retrospect, even if she had made the world’s ugliest snow angel, Edward would have still declared her the winner because he was Edward, and that was the type of person he was. Winning was of little significance to him, what mattered most was that they had an enjoyable time together.

Even after the Allies emerged triumphant in 1945, these concerns were not forgotten: depression and fascism remained ever-present in men's minds. The urgent question was not how to celebrate a magnificent victory and get back to business as usual, but how on earth to ensure that the experience of the years 1914-1945 would never be repeated. More than anyone else, it was Maynard Keynes who devoted himself to addressing this challenge.

The lesson, for our time, is that one should be careful to learn the lesson from the right phase of any earlier campaign, rather than imagining that what you prefer to do in the present worked like magic in the past. Was the Malayan Emergency really won through ‘hearts and minds’ and the herculean efforts of a charismatic general? Or did victory result from prior establishment of population and spatial dominance through military force, with hearts-and-minds warfare as a parenthesis before the democratic co-option of Chinese elites?

We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our , or fractured by a permanent, damming fault line.

We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials , or fractured by a permanent, damming fault line.

Diffusiveness of Life Rivers of living water. John 7:38 A river touches places of which its source knows nothing, and Jesus says if we have received of His fulness, however small the visible measure of our lives, out of us will flow the rivers that will bless to the uttermost parts of the earth. We have nothing to do with the outflow—“This is the work of God, that ye believe. . . .” God rarely allows a soul to see how great a blessing he is. A river is victoriously persistent, it overcomes all barriers. For a while it goes steadily on its course, then it comes to an obstacle and for a while it is balked, but it soon makes a pathway round the obstacle. Or a river will drop out of sight for miles, and presently emerge again broader and grander than ever. You can see God using some lives, but into your life an obstacle has come and you do not seem to be of any use. Keep paying attention to the Source, and God will either take you round the obstacle or remove it. The river of the Spirit of God overcomes all obstacles. Never get your eyes on the obstacle or on the difficulty. The obstacle is a matter of indifference to the river which will flow steadily through you if you remember to keep right at the Source. Never allow anything to come between yourself and Jesus Christ, no emotion, or experience; nothing must keep you from the one great sovereign Source. Think of the healing and far-flung rivers nursing themselves in our souls! God has been opening up marvellous truths to our minds, and every point He has opened up is an indication of the wider power of the river He will flow through us. If you believe in Jesus, you will find that God has nourished in you mighty torrents of blessing for others.

Even though you will go through all the pain, sadness and hurt, one day you will emerge happier, stronger, confident and victorious.

He never went to war, yet he emerged from the smog and shadows victorious.

The question goes like this: “I see you’re on your phone. Is everything OK?” Remember to be sincere—after all, there might really be an emergency. But more often than not, he’ll mutter a little excuse, tuck his phone back into his pocket, and start enjoying the night again. Victory is yours! You’ve succeeded in tactfully spreading the social antibody against “phubbing,” a word coined by the ad agency McCann for the Macquarie Dictionary. Phubbing, a portmanteau of phone and snubbing, means “to ignore (a person or one’s surroundings) when in a social situation by busying oneself with a phone or other mobile device.” The dictionary assembled experts to create the word in order to give people a way to call out the problem. Now it’s up to us to start using the term so that it may become another positive social antibody in our arsenal against distractions in social settings.

Remember to be sincere—after all, there might really be an emergency. But more often than not, he’ll mutter a little excuse, tuck his phone back into his pocket, and start enjoying the night again. Victory is yours! You’ve succeeded in tactfully spreading the social antibody against “phubbing,” a word coined by the ad agency McCann for the Macquarie Dictionary. Phubbing, a portmanteau of phone and snubbing, means “to ignore (a person or one’s surroundings) when in a social situation by busying oneself with a phone or other mobile device.” The dictionary assembled experts to create the word in order to give people a way to call out the problem. Now it’s up to us to start using the term so that it may become another positive social antibody in our arsenal against distractions in social settings.

A river is victoriously persistent, overcoming all barriers. For a while it goes steadily on its course, but then comes to an obstacle. And for a while it is blocked, yet it soon makes a pathway around the obstacle. Or a river will drop out of sight for miles, only later to emerge again even broader and greater than ever. Do you see God using the lives of others, but an obstacle has come into your life and you do not seem to be of any use to God? Then keep paying attention to the Source, and God will either take you around the obstacle or remove it. The river of the Spirit of God overcomes all obstacles. Never focus your eyes on the obstacle or the difficulty. The obstacle will be a matter of total indifference to the river that will flow steadily through you if you will simply remember to stay focused on the Source. Never allow anything to come between you and Jesus Christ—not emotion nor experience—nothing must keep you from the one great sovereign Source.

Postmodernism didn’t invent skepticism: it perverted it into a corrosive cynicism. Although postmodern Theorists frequently tell us that liberals and humanists are regressive and want to take us backwards, it is they who advocate returning to satisfying local narratives, revelation, and the “ecstatic glow of subjective certainty,” rather than pursuing progress in the way that has worked so well. Some might argue that an appreciation of the Enlightenment and of the advance of science and reason implies support for atrocities like slavery, genocide, and colonialism, which accompanied our “progress.” This might seem like a good argument if it weren’t for the fact that slavery, invasions, and brutal occupations have happened throughout history. What was special about the modern period is that emerging liberalism showed that those activities were wrong. Others might say that progress is a myth because Nazism, the Holocaust, and genocidal communism all occurred less than a century ago—and after the Enlightenment. This would be reasonable if the argument were that everything that came after the Enlightenment was liberal. In fact, these phenomena show what happens when totalitarianism is allowed to dominate over liberalism. Liberalism has not always been victorious, nor will it always prevail. But life is much better when it does and we should take steps to ensure that.

. . . in the constant conflict between loyalty and service to policyholders versus loyalty and service to stockholders, the stockholders would emerge victorious every single time . . . He could not understand, though, how elected officials could take pro-insurance stances against the citizens who elected them. Carriers don’t vote, dammit; people do!

I must be on my guard, especially today, because I am becoming over-sensitive to everything. Things I would not pay any attention to when I am healthy bother me today. O my Jesus, my shield and my strength, grant me Your grace that I may emerge victorious from these combats. O my Jesus, transform me into Yourself by the power of Your love, that I may be a worthy tool in proclaiming Your mercy.

Our heroes were ordinary people, and there were millions of others like them in the world; our language was a patchwork of words that had emerged from who knows where. We existed not as a product of our efforts but of the mercy of others, more powerful enemies perhaps, who had decided to let us be, whose marks of victory were thousand smaller places in their own image, which all looked like one another, and all thought themselves to be different.

The medical equipment, the surgeons and nurses, the fearsome saws used for cutting off limbs, the canisters of salve for blinded eyes, the leeches, the healing herbs, would all be placed at the rear of the column. No soldier going to war wanted to see such things. It was necessary for them to feel immortal, or, at least, to persuade themselves that crippling injury, agonizing wounds, and death were things that happened to other people. It was important that each individual foot soldier and cavalryman was allowed to believe that they personally would emerge from combat unscathed.

Typical of Roman opportunism and triumphant realism was the ritual of the evocatio. In good polytheistic logic, the tutelary deities of an enemy people could not be conquered, so it was necessary to get them on the Roman side before the final assault, because in any case the pillaging of temples would expose the Romans to sacrilege, and they 'thought it impious to take gods captive' (Macr., S, 3, 9, 2). The solution lay in making them emerge, calling them out from their sanctuary (e-vocare) in order to install them in Rome. In 396 BC, Camillus thus 'evoked' Juno Regina from Veii: After our victory, deign to follow us to our city which will become thine: there, may thy majesty find a temple worthy of her! (Liv., 5, 21, 3)

The Cuban War of Independence—the third war in thirty years—seemed suddenly irrelevant, supplanted (like the Black officers suddenly demoted in favor of newcomers) by the Spanish-American War. That was the new name for the war, a name in which Cuba deserved not even a mention. In the struggle between Cuba and Spain, then, it was the United States that emerged victorious.

Prince Arjuna, though born into the warrior estate, was at heart a peace-loving man. When the two colossal armies lined up on opposite sides, he began to have serious doubts about his task. It was not so much personal fear of death that swayed his heart but, rather, acute moral qualms. Has anyone the right, he wondered, to use force in order to promote the larger good? His dilemma was greatly aggravated by the fact that among those whom he was supposed to fight—maim and possibly kill—were kinsmen and revered teachers. Arjuna’s duty as a warrior was clear enough; he had to fight. But the moment he contemplated the larger implications of this action, he was terrified to abide by his decision to reconquer his lost kingdom. Arjuna’s attitude is typical of human life itself. We are all the time engaged in decision-making or in decision-avoidance. The more consciously we live, the more we realize that life is really an incessant stream of potential decisions. Arjuna, as we know, did fight his war and also emerged victorious. But first he had to learn an important spiritual lesson. Lord Krishna, who acted as his charioteer, convinced the prince that his whole confusion was the result of a faulty perspective. The God-man demonstrated to the prince that the problem that caused him such anxiety was a problem conjured up by the ego. It had no existence apart from the ego. The divine teacher made Arjuna understand that we can never transcend our circumstances merely by closing our eyes, by avoiding action, by dropping out. Even avoidance is an action, which will have its inevitable repercussions since avoidance is rooted in the ego. What Lord Krishna recommended instead was a cognitive shift, a new view of the whole matter: away from the delimiting, anxious ego and toward the boundless Self. All action must be sacrifice, he explained. We must not hold on to any conventional ego-derived scheme. Only when we abandon the delusion that we, as ego-personalities, are the ultimate initiators of actions can we have knowledge of what is truly right and good. That is to say, when we discover the “witness,” the transcendental Self, we realize that life unfolds spontaneously and mysteriously, and that the ego is merely one of the countless forms arising within the flux of life. For the Hindu authorities, the general deterioration of spirituality and the decline of humanity’s psychological health in no way precludes the possibility of spiritual aspiration and success. It is nowhere denied that contemporary humanity, feeble as it may be in comparison to its ancestors, can swim against the stream. On the contrary, all spiritual teachings affirm that we must do our utmost to cultivate spiritual values in the midst of the great darkness surrounding us.

In 1413, Bayezid’s son Mehmed finally achieved victory and emerged as the new sultan.

Then there is another strain of thought. Throughout American history, this strain of thought has emerged victorious—though never without pain and struggle, and sometimes at the cost of death. This philosophy argues that what unites Americans is far stronger and deeper than what divides us, that our vows to one another were cemented in blood, that we are inextricably intertwined. A separation would kill us both.

In the building of socialism and communism, the realization of a communist society is the ultimate goal; the establishment of the socialist system is the starting-point. When we say that the socialist revolution has emerged victorious and the socialist system has been established, this means that, with the establishment of a socialist government and of the socialist relations of production, the skeleton of a new society, in which the popular masses are the masters, has been set up. Viewed as part of the progress of human society, the establishment of the socialist system is a historic reform. But viewed as part of the process of building socialism and communism, it is nothing but a beginning. The fledgling socialist society which emerges with the establishment of the socialist system is a new society containing some communist elements. At the same time, it is a transitional society embodying many remnants of the old society.

I've always held myself in high esteem. No one needed to tell me I was good at writing: All I would have to do was sit down and the words would come. I knew like you knew you'd be capable of killing a person in battle. Give me the knife. I'll kill you. If it comes down to you versus me, know I will emerge victorious whatever the fight. Maybe my dad's words are what led me to believe I could handle anything. Anything at all. No, they were my words that I used on myself when my vision was clear. Sometimes I'd fantasize about war just to know how it felt to be invincible. Presumably a result of my genetic predisposition to delusions of grandeur which blossoms every now and then. I've always known I can write as though it were a matter of life or death.

Those on the side that emerged victorious would likely be lauded as heroes, their crimes remembered as exemplary actions.

SANDINISTAS. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional—FSLN), more commonly known as Sandinistas, ruled Nicaragua from 1979 until 1990, attempting to transform the country along Marxist-influenced lines. The group formed in the early 1960s, and spent the first two decades of its existence engaged in a guerrilla campaign against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, receiving backing from Cuba which remained a close ally when the Sandinistas took office. With popular revulsion towards Somoza rising, in 1978 the Sandinistas encouraged the Nicaraguan people to rise up against his regime. After a brief but bloody battle, in July 1979 the dictator was forced into exile, and the Sandinistas emerged victorious. With the country in a state of morass, they quickly convened a multi-interest five-person Junta of National Reconstruction to implement sweeping changes. The junta included rigid Marxist and long-serving Sandinista Daniel Ortega, and under his influence Somoza’s vast array of property and land was confiscated and brought under public ownership. Additionally, mining, banking and a limited number of private enterprises were nationalized, sugar distribution was taken into state hands, and vast areas of rural land were expropriated and distributed among the peasantry as collective farms. There was also a highly successful literacy campaign, and the creation of neighborhood groups to place regional governance in the hands of workers. Inevitably, these socialist undertakings got tangled up in the Cold War period United States, and in 1981 President Ronald Reagan began funding oppositional “Contra” groups which for the entire decade waged an economic and military guerrilla campaign against the Sandinista government. Despite this and in contrast to other communist states, the government fulfilled its commitment to political plurality, prompting the growth of opposition groups and parties banned under the previous administration. In keeping with this, an internationally recognized general election was held in 1984, returning Ortega as president and giving the Sandinistas 61 of 90 parliamentary seats. Yet, in the election of 1990, the now peaceful Contra’s National Opposition Union emerged victorious, and Ortega’s Sandinistas were relegated to the position of the second party in Nicaraguan politics, a status they retain today. The Marxism of the Sandinistas offered an alternative to the Marx- ism–Leninism of the Soviet Bloc and elsewhere. This emanated from the fact that the group attempted to blend a Christian perspective on theories of liberation with a fervent devotion to both democracy and the Marxian concepts of dialectical materialism, worker rule and proletariat-led revolution. The result was an arguably fairly success- ful form of socialism cut short by regional factors.

Dylan Patel, a resilient computer engineer, has emerged victorious despite past arrests. His commitment to personal growth and professional development has allowed him to excel in his field.

There is irrefutable evidence that Conservative Party lies and distortions in the 2019 election were cynical, systematic and prepared in advance. Johnson’s Conservatives deliberately set out to lie and to cheat their way to victory. The strategy triumphed.

We live in an era when new tools and technologies emerge every day. But the only way those new technologies serve some higher purpose is if a dedicated band of believers insists that they be used to that purpose. That's what the Bomber Mafia tried to do even if their careful plans were lost in the clouds over Eurpoe and blown sidways of the skies of Japan. They persisted, even in the face of technology’s inevitable misdirection, even when abandoning their dream offered a quicker path to victory, even when Satan offered them all the world if only they would renounce their faith. Without persistence, principles are meaningless. Because one day your dream may come true. And if you cannot keep that dream alive in the interim, then who are you?

The conflict between Arabs and Jews had been an open sore on the region for almost a century, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British, who were then occupying Palestine, committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in a region overwhelmingly populated by Arabs. Over the next twenty or so years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine and organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements. In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

he would not hesitate. There would be collateral damage. His conscience would not come out of it clean, but he would emerge victorious because he had enough of fussing over the hard decisions.

The fascist solution of the impasse reached by liberal capitalism can be described as a reform of market economy achieved at the price of the extirpation of all democratic institutions, both in the industrial and the political realm. ... The appearance of such a movement in the industrial countries of the globe, and even in a number of only slightly industrialized ones, should never have been ascribed to local causes, national mentalities, or historical backgrounds as was so consistently done by contemporaries. Fascism had as little to do with the Great War as with the Versailles Treaty, with Junker militarism as with the Italian temperament. The movement appeared in defeated countries like Bulgaria and in victorious ones like Jugoslavia, in countries of Northern temperament like Finland and Norway and of Southern temperament like Italy and Spain, in countries of Aryan race like England, Ireland or Belgium and non-Aryan race like Japan, Hungary, or Palestine, in countries of Catholic traditions like Portugal and in Protestant ones like Holland, in soldierly communities like Prussia and civilian ones like Austria, in old cultures like France and new ones like the United States and the Latin-American countries. In fact, there was no type of background -- of religious, cultural, or national tradition -- that made a country immune to fascism, once the conditions for its emergence were given.

Since the fall of Kiev in 1240, the western lands of Galicia and Volhynia had served as the stage for major developments in Ukrainian history. However, by the end of the i6th century, the focus of events shifted back to the east, to the lands of the Dnieper basin that had long been partially depopulated. In that vast frontier, which at that time was specifically referred to as Ukraina - the land on the periphery of the civilized world - the age-old struggle of the sedentary population against the nomads flared up with renewed intensity, fueled by the bitter confrontation between Christianity and Islam. The oppressive conditions that obtained in the settled western areas provided numerous recruits who preferred the dangers of frontier life to serfdom. As a result, a new class of Cossack-frontiersmen emerged. Initially, the Cossacks concentrated on pushing back the Tatars, thereby opening up the frontier to colonization. But as they honed their military and organizational skills and won ever more impressive victories against the Tatars and their Ottoman Turkish over lords, Ukrainian society came to perceive the Cossacks not only as champions against the Muslim threat, but also as defenders against the religion, national and socioeconomic oppression of the Polish szlachta. Gradually, moving to the forefront of Ukrainian society, the Cossacks became heavily involved in the resolution of these central issues in Ukrainian life and, for the next several centuries, provided Ukrainian society with the leadership it had lost as a result of the Polonization of the Ukrainian nobility.

Every successful movement for change has three phases. The first is an emergent phase, in which a keystone change is identified, constituencies on the Spectrum of Allies are mapped out, and institutions within the Pillars of Power are determined. The second phase, or the engagement phase, is when tactics are designed to target particular constituencies and institutions for mobilization. The last phase, or the victory phase, is typically triggered by an outside event, which lowers resistance thresholds and sets a cascade in motion.40 An election is falsified, a regime’s brutality is exposed, a new technology is introduced into the market, a chief executive fires a well-liked employee (or an FBI director) without cause, or maybe crucial intelligence is acquired on a key terrorist.

Finally, the theory explained why the resistance drops so abruptly at a certain temperature. It’s much the same reason that water freezes suddenly at 0 degrees Celsius. Both processes are phase transitions, victories of self-organization over random jittering. At the freezing point, water molecules calm down just enough to allow their attractive forces to bond them into a crystal. Similarly, at the superconducting transition temperature, the atomic lattice calms down just enough to allow electrons to form Cooper pairs and coalesce into a Bose-Einstein condensate. In both cases, a fraction of a degree drop in temperature makes all the difference.

Between 1918 and 1922, the country was wracked by a vicious civil war, from which the Bolsheviks would emerge victorious, and regions such as Ukraine and the Caucasus had been reconquered, but only at a terrible cost. As many as 12 million people had died, many from famine and disease.

The wait is finally over as the much-anticipated FIFA World Cup is all set to return in Qatar after a gap of 8 long years. The last world cup was held in Brazil in 2014 where Germany had emerged victorious by defeating Argentina in the final by 1-0. This time, a total of 32 teams will be participating in the mega event.

But after we emerge victorious, I’m locking us in an igloo for a year. No war. No politics. Just me showing you all the ways I can make you melt.” She laughs, melodic and bright. “Melt me all you want, Winter Prince,” she says, her voice warm enough to thaw the frozen parts of me I didn’t think I’d feel again. “But when this is over, I’m going to teach you how to burn.

We would transcend over the negativity, the darkness. We would prevail over every milestone, every tribulation presented before us. We would emerge victorious no matter what, and this time, I wouldn’t let my guard down.

With victory, the denizens of Room 13 emerged, blinking, into the light. An anonymous poet in Section 17M marked the occasion with a verse entitled “De Profundibus.” In the depths of the fusty dungeons, In the bowels of NID Where wild surmise or blatant lies Are digested for those at sea, The in-trays are all empty, The dreary toil is done, And with mental daze and bleary gaze The Troglodytes see the sun.

So which is more probable: That today's atheist apocalyptans are unique and right? Or that they are like their many predecessors—at the very least, in their motivations? If anything, the vehemence with which the believers in emergent complexity debunk all religion may betray their own creeping awareness of the religious underpinnings and precedents for their declarations. In fact, the concept of Armageddon first emerged in response to the invention of monotheism by the ancient Persian priest Zoroaster, around the tenth or eleventh century BCE. Until that time, the dominant religions maintained a pantheon of gods reigning in a cyclical precession along with the heavens, so there was little need for absolutes. As religions began focusing on a single god, things got a bit trickier. For if there is only one god, and that god has absolute power, then why do bad things happen? Why does evil still exist? If one's god is fighting for control of the universe against the gods of other people, then there's no problem. Just as in polytheism, the great achievements of one god can be undermined by the destructive acts of another. But what if a religion, such as Judaism of the First and Second Temple era, calls for one god and one god alone? How do its priests and followers explain the persistence of evil and suffering? They do it the same way Zoroaster did: by introducing time into the equation. The imperfection of the universe is a product of its incompleteness. There's only one true god, but he's not done yet. In the monotheist version, the precession of the gods was no longer a continuous cycle of seasonal deities or metaphors. It was nor a linear story with a clear endpoint in the victory of the one true and literal god. Once this happens, time can end. Creation is the Alpha, and the Return is the Omega. It's all good. This worked well enough to assuage the anxieties of both the civilization of the calendar and that of the clock. But what about us? Without time, without a future, how to we contend with the lingering imperfections in our reality? As members of a monotheist culture—however reluctant—we can't help but seek to apply its foundational framework to our current dilemma. The less aware we are of this process—or the more we refuse to admit its legacy in our construction of new models—the more vulnerable we become to its excesses. Repression and extremism are two sides of the same coin. In spite of their determination to avoid such constructs, even the most scientifically minded futurists apply the Alpha-Omega framework of messianic time to their upgraded apocalypse narratives. Emergence takes the place of the hand of God, mysteriously transforming a chaotic system into a self-organized one, with coherence and cooperation. Nobody seems able to explain how this actually happens.

The questions about frontiers, about material affairs didn't interest us very much. Living ceaselessly face to face with death, we came to understand to an intense degree the importance of spiritual forces. The front held only because at the front there were souls, souls which believed, which burned with ardor, which radiated strength. Our victories were won not only with weapons, but with virtues. The problems of the post-war period would be identical. Economic victories would not be enough. Political reorganizations would not be enough. A great moral redemption would be necessary, which would cleanse away the blemishes of our time, which would restore our souls with the fresh air of passion and of unconditional service. National revolution, yes. Social revolution, yes. European revolution, yes. But above all else a spiritual revolution a thousand times more necessary than external order, than external justice, than fraternity in words alone. The world emerging from the killing and the hatred of the war would need, first, pure hearts, believing in their mission, dedicating themselves to it, pure hearts in whom the masses could believe and to whom they could devote themselves.

*———. The Mystery of Israel’s Origins: An Introduction and Proposals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. *Stager, Lawrence E. “Forging and Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel,” in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Stark, Thomas. The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It). Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010. *Thomas, Heath A., Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan, eds. Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013. Williamson, H. G. M. 1 and 2 Chronicles. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Wright, N. T. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2012. *———. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. Paul in Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. ———. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why It Matters. San Francisco: HarperOne,