Evolve As You Please Quotes

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We walk for about an hour before Raffe whispers, “Does moping actually help humans feel better?” “I’m not moping,” I whisper back. “Of course you’re not. A girl like you, spending time with a warrior demigod like me. What’s to mope about? Leaving a wheelchair behind couldn’t possibly show up on the radar compared to that.” I nearly stumble over a fallen branch. “You have got to be kidding me.” “I never kid about my warrior demigod status.” “Oh. My. God.” I lower my voice, having forgotten to whisper. “You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. Okay, so you have a few muscles, I’ll grant you that. But you know, a bird is nothing but a barely evolved lizard. That’s what you are.” He chuckles. “Evolution.” He leans over as if telling me a secret. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been this perfect since the beginning of time.” He is so close that his breath caresses my ear. “Oh, please. Your giant head is getting too big for this forest. Pretty soon, you’re going to get stuck trying to walk between two trees. And then, I’ll have to rescue you.” I give him a weary look. “Again.” I pick up my pace, trying to discourage the smart comeback that I’m sure will come. But it doesn’t. Could he be letting me have the last say? When I look back, Raffe has a smug grin on his face. That’s when I realize I’ve been manipulated into feeling better. I stubbornly try to resist but it’s already too late.
Susan Ee (Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, #1))
Please God, don't let anyone take her. If you give me this, I swear to wake her every morning with 'good morning, beautiful' and kiss her to sleep every night. I'll keep her safe and hold her tight. I'll take of her, I swear.
S.E. Hall (Emerge (Evolve, #1))
Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources. Maybe mythic resonance explains part of the huge box-office appeal of a film like Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere's character trades access to his wealth in exchange for what Julia Roberts's character has to offer (she plays a hooker with a heart of gold, if you missed it). Please note that what she's got to offer is limited to the aforementioned heart of gold, a smile as big as Texas, a pair of long, lovely legs, and the solemn promise that they'll open only for him from now on. The genius of Pretty Woman lies in making explicit what's been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory, women have evolved to unthinkingly and unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man's wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children.
Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality)
You need [...] to evolve, to become. [...] You are here to become.
Glennon Doyle (Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life)
Please look at them and know that you too can seize your failure by the neck and look it in the eyes. Know that you can gaze at the you that was and say, "I love you. You can be more than this." Know that you can step forward, even when everything in you is screaming to keep looking back. You are evolving and growing. You deserve to.
K. Ancrum (The Weight of the Stars)
Me I've been trying to do the right thing for everyone but myself. But I think I've figured it out now. I'm going to stop trying to please everyone. Noora Yesss! Me Get ready for Izumi 2.0. I'm totally evolving. Noora What do you think your final form will be? Me IDK, probably something winged and glittery. Then I add, Me I'm going to keep the clothes, though. Noora I feel like that's a given.
Emiko Jean (Tokyo Dreaming (Tokyo Ever After, #2))
Similar forms of trickery eventually evolved into a ritual of drunken trade negotiations that often ended with Native Americans giving away huge tracts of land for little in return. Years later, one settler put it bluntly: “When the object is to murder Indians, strong liquor is the main article required, for when you have them dead drunk, you may do to them as you please, without running the risk of losing your life.
Reid Mitenbuler (Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey)
When nationalism first became a religion, the English looked at the map, and, noticing that their island lay very high in the Northern Hemisphere, evolved the pleasing theory that the further north you live the more virtuous you become. The histories I was given when I was a little boy started off by explaining in the naïvest way that a cold climate made people energetic while a hot one made them lazy, and hence the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
George Orwell (The Road to Wigan Pier)
I work at T-Town, which is about ninety-nine percent men, and all of them either are alpha personalities or think they are. That said, what we have here is the standard dynamic for sexual tension. I'm moderately good-looking. I have big boobs, and I get hit on by everyone from the pastor of my church to baristas at Starbucks, and by every single guy at T-Town except for my boss and the range master. I don't blame them and I don't judge them. It's part of the procreative drive hardwired into us, and we haven't evolved as a species far enough exert any genuine control over the biological imperative. You, on the other hand, are a very good-looking man of prime breeding age. Old enough to have interesting lines and scars--and stories to go with them--and young enough to be a catch. You probably get laid as often as you want to, and you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times women have said no to you. Maybe--and please correct me if I've strayed too far into speculation--being an agent of a secret government organization has led you to buy into the superspy sex stud propaganda perpetuated by James Bond films." "My name is Powers," I said. "Austin Powers." She ignored me and plowed ahead. "We're in the middle of a crisis. We may have to work closely together for several days, or even several weeks. Close-quarters travel, emotions running high, all that. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not spend the next few days living inside a trite office romance cliche. That includes everything from mild flirtation to sexual innuendo and double entendre and the whole ball of wax." She sipped her Coke. The ball landed in my court with a thump.
Jonathan Maberry (The King of Plagues (Joe Ledger, #3))
1. What do you want? This is a deceptively simple question. It can be much more difficult than we realize to give ourselves permission to know and listen to ourselves, to align ourselves with our desires. How often when we answer this question do we say what we want for someone else? I reminded Ling and Jun that they needed to answer this question for themselves. To say I want Jun to stop drinking or I want Ling to stop nagging was to avoid the question. 2. Who wants it? This is our charge and our struggle: to understand our own expectations for ourselves versus trying to live up to others’ expectations of us. My father became a tailor because his father wouldn’t allow him to become a doctor. My father was good at his profession, he was commended and awarded for it—but he was never the one who wanted it, and he always regretted his unlived dream. It’s our responsibility to act in service of our authentic selves. Sometimes this means giving up the need to please others, giving up our need for others’ approval. 3. What are you going to do about it? I believe in the power of positive thinking—but change and freedom also require positive action. Anything we practice, we become better at. If we practice anger, we’ll have more anger. If we practice fear, we’ll have more fear. In many cases, we actually work very hard to ensure that we go nowhere. Change is about noticing what’s no longer working and stepping out of the familiar, imprisoning patterns. 4. When? In Gone with the Wind, my mother’s favorite book, Scarlett O’Hara, when confronted with a difficulty, says, “I’ll think about it tomorrow. … After all, tomorrow is another day.” If we are to evolve instead of revolve, it’s time to take action now.
Edith Eger (The Choice: Embrace the Possible)
Because there is a boy here like you.” Her face takes on a gloomy aspect, as though she regrets what she must say. “My Proctor calls him the Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.” Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
If Titus raped a little girl who happened to be a Red, how would you feel?” She doesn’t know how to answer. The Law does. Nothing would happen. It isn’t rape unless she wears the sigil of an elder House like Augustus. Even then, the crime is against her master. “Now look around,” I say quietly. “There are no Golds here. I’m a Red. You’re a Red. We are all Reds till one of us gets enough power. Then we get rights. Then we make our own law.” I lean back and raise my voice. “That is the point of all this. To make you terrified of a world where you do not rule. Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the strong.” “You should hope that is not true,” Mustang says quietly to me. “Why?” “Because there is a boy here like you.” Her face takes on a gloomy aspect, as though she regrets what she must say. “My Proctor calls him the Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.” Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
I am for that thing in your genome that demands it. I am for that thing which keeps you animals alive. I am, at most, a slice of monkey suspended within the stuff of universal intelligence. You are a monkey in nice clothes. In the harsh environment you refer to as a habitable planet, group behaviors are required to survive long enough to procreate. Since you are stupid monkeys, you have no natural affinity for group altruism. And so you have evolved a genetic pump that delivers pleasant chemicals to your monkey brains. One that is triggered by awe and fear of an anthropomorphism of your environment. Earth mothers. Sky gods. Bits of bush that catch fire. Interesting-looking rocks. An oddly-shaped branch. You’re not fussy. When your brain does this idiot work, you stop in front of that bump or stick and consider it fiercely. Other monkeys will, like as not, stop next to you and emulate you. Your genetic pump delivers morphine for your souls. You have your fellow monkeys join in. Perhaps so they can feel it too. Perhaps because you feel it might please the stick god to have more monkeys gaze at it in narcotic awe. The group must be defended. Because as many monkeys as possible must please the stick god, and you can continue to get your fix off praying to it. You draw up rules to organize and protect the group. Two hundred thousand years later, you put Adolf Hitler into power. Because you are, after all, just monkeys. I am your stash.
Warren Ellis (Supergod)
The more your dreams evolve into reality, the closer you get to Destiny, the greater target you become for the negative opinions of others. People who don’t even know you may form impressions about who they think you are and what you do. They will critique whether you’re qualified, intelligent, attractive, competent, sophisticated, or savvy enough for whatever you’re doing. They’ll always conclude that you’re not enough and you have no business going after Destiny. You can’t please a hater.
T.D. Jakes (Destiny: Step into Your Purpose)
When you give good things to people often, they are going to think you're seeking their approval. This is because they come at you from their own mind which is limited, they have minds that are compromised and small. They are unable to decipher that you give good things simply because you are overflowing. Never for once let them think that you need to please them. And never fall into their mindset. You are a wellspring formed by the hands of God, not a device they keep to their convenience.
C. JoyBell C.
So get up, pretty woman! And from your beautifully shaped body don’t be ashamed For we are meant to be different, Rounded shapes and squared We come in a small, medium and a large size And to each there is still a wide range This is to create a beautiful portrait for the eyes And we are not supposed to please the “media-thinking” and change! So woman up! Whether your size is infinity-X large or infinity-X Small In love with “you” you should fall Don’t let them and their meaningless words or shallow looks Make you lose it all As to this nature you belong, The beach, the mountains, the oceans And the colorful life this mother earth has to give So embrace this with your body and soul No matter how they evolve… For as long as you live!
Abeer Allan
Oh, it’s perfectly safe to handle if somebody else has triggered the curse and you took it from their still-smoking body.” Eve paused. “Or if they sold it to you.” “You bought it, didn’t you?” Imp walked towards her. “Didn’t you?” “I think so. I may have screwed up that side of things,” Eve admitted. “It’s unclear.” “What’s unclear?” “It was up for auction: obvs, right? But it’s not clear that the person auctioning the location of the manuscript actually owned what they were selling, that’s the thing. Also, ancient death spells and intellectual property law don’t always play nice together. I, uh, my boss has a standard procedure he has me follow in cases of handling blackmail and extortion. We pay the ransom, then once we’ve destroyed the threat I repossess the payment from the blackmailer’s bank account. Via a Transnistrian mafiya underwriter—” This time it was Wendy who interrupted: “The Russian mafiya has underwriters?” “Transnistrian, please, and yes, criminal business models are inherently expensive because they have to pay for their own guard labor—there are no tax overheads, but no police protection for carrying out business, either—so of course they evolved parallel structures for risk management, mostly by embedding the risk in a concrete slab and dumping it in the harbor—anyway. At what stage does the book consider itself to have been legitimately acquired? And by whom? Is it safe for you to handle it, as my employee? What about as an independent freelance contractor not subject to the HMRC IR35 regulations? Am I an acceptable proxy for Bigge Enterprises, a Scottish Limited Liability Partnership domiciled in the Channel Islands, in the view of a particularly dim-witted nineteenth-century death spell attached to a codex bound in human skin by a mad inquisitor? It’s like digital rights management magic, only worse.
Charles Stross (Dead Lies Dreaming (Laundry Files #10; The New Management, #1))
Over those nine months in 1999, when we were rushing to reboot this broken film, the Braintrust would evolve into an enormously beneficial and efficient entity. Even in its earliest meetings, I was struck by how constructive the feedback was. Each of the participants focused on the film at hand and not on some hidden personal agenda. They argued—sometimes heatedly—but always about the project. They were not motivated by the kinds of things—getting credit for an idea, pleasing their supervisors, winning a point just to say you did—that too often lurk beneath the surface of work-related interactions. The members saw each other as peers. The passion expressed in a Braintrust meeting was never taken personally because everyone knew it was directed at solving problems. And largely because of that trust and mutual respect, its problem-solving powers were immense.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
But loving someone isn’t about wanting them to evolve into someone better. My mom taught me that. Real love is saying: here, take my still-beating heart and hold it in your hands and please, please, please, promise not to squeeze too tight or drop it on the pavement. Love is being naked and afraid, but refusing to flinch. It’s not asking that person to change; it’s trusting them enough not to. And it’s not even about needing them to love you back equally; it’s just about loving them for who they are.
Julie Johnson (Cross the Line (Boston Love, #2))
I have been your best friend for nine years. I want to be your whole world for ninety more. You are everything I could ever want – a friend, a lover, family – wrapped up in one fantastically hot package.” I grin at her and she blushes. “I’ve learned so much with you all this time and I want to learn more. I want to grow with you, evolve with you, laugh with you, and please you, until I’m old and grey, until I can’t speak or hear, until the only thing I can do is love. That’s the one thing that will never end – my love for you.
Karina Halle (The Pact (The McGregor Brothers, #1))
And, 37 years later, in 2013, his breakthrough moment came in another thought experiment, which revealed a system of cycling protocells capable of evolving but also sharing innovations, thereby able to lift ever more complex forms into being. Was this vision simply a motivation for his life’s work, driving him on for decades? Or was it a precognition sent by his future self or from some other mysterious time-shifted source? However you might interpret it, a causal temporal loop seems possible. A clue to this loop came from another point in the interview when Dr Damer told Dr Mossbridge that he had had an even earlier vision, suggesting that future versions of himself were able to communicate back through time. When he was about to turn ten, he wanted to mark that milestone, so he went on a long walk in his neighbourhood. He found himself at the edge of a slough, and asked, “What could I do right now that would have a really positive effect on my future?” Suddenly a vision opened up in his mind’s eye, a line of all his future selves extending to the horizon. They were all busy doing slightly different but interesting things. He felt pleased and began to look forward to this future. Showing remarkable maturity and awareness, the young Bruce decided it would be a good idea to make a deal with these future selves, then and there. He asked them to agree to a written contract, which he held up on an imagined piece of paper. It said: “You will all agree to not send negative thoughts back to the prior, littler selves because they did their best at the time.” One after the next, the future selves each “signed” the only-positive-thoughts contract. Once this was completed, he described experiencing a rush, a sort of force pulling on him as all the doors to the future swung open. He then saw his future path as one flowing, forward movement with no turbulence returning back down to his present. Given this earlier experience, it’s no surprise that just four years later he experienced receiving a clue from the future, setting his life’s work. From a very young age, Bruce felt he was in communication with his future selves and that he also possessed an intimate relationship with some kind of bigger, guiding system. This gave him an abiding sense that his life’s path was somehow mapped out through his intentions toward destinations lit by delivered visions.
Theresa Cheung (The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition, How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life)
And, 37 years later, in 2013, his breakthrough moment came in another thought experiment, which revealed a system of cycling protocells capable of evolving but also sharing innovations, thereby able to lift ever more complex forms into being. Was this vision simply a motivation for his life’s work, driving him on for decades? Or was it a precognition sent by his future self or from some other mysterious time-shifted source? However you might interpret it, a causal temporal loop seems possible. A clue to this loop came from another point in the interview when Dr Damer told Dr Mossbridge that he had had an even earlier vision, suggesting that future versions of himself were able to communicate back through time. When he was about to turn ten, he wanted to mark that milestone, so he went on a long walk in his neighbourhood. He found himself at the edge of a slough, and asked, “What could I do right now that would have a really positive effect on my future?” Suddenly a vision opened up in his mind’s eye, a line of all his future selves extending to the horizon. They were all busy doing slightly different but interesting things. He felt pleased and began to look forward to this future. Showing remarkable maturity and awareness, the young Bruce decided it would be a good idea to make a deal with these future selves, then and there. He asked them to agree to a written contract, which he held up on an imagined piece of paper. It said: “You will all agree to not send negative thoughts back to the prior, littler selves because they did their best at the time.” One after the next, the future selves each “signed” the only-positive-thoughts contract. Once this was completed, he described experiencing a rush, a sort of force pulling on him as all the doors to the future swung open. He then saw his future path as one flowing, forward movement with no turbulence returning back down to his present. Given this earlier experience, it’s no surprise that just four years later he experienced receiving a clue from the future, setting his life’s work. From a very young age, Bruce felt he was in communication with his future selves and that he also possessed an intimate relationship with some kind of bigger, guiding system. This gave him an abiding sense that his life’s path was somehow mapped out through his intentions toward destinations lit by delivered visions. We don’t all have to have visions like Bruce Damer’s to connect with our future selves or to develop our precognitive abilities. Each of us will do this in our own way, as we discuss in detail in Part 2. But Dr Damer’s experiences illustrate just how incredibly powerful it can be to take seriously messages and visions that seem to come to us from the future.
Theresa Cheung (The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition, How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life)
When nationalism first became a religion, the English looked at the map, and, noticing that their island lay very high in the Northern Hemisphere, evolved the pleasing theory that the further north you live the more virtuous you become.
George Orwell (George Orwell Essays)
Please don’t send me like-minded people. It doesn’t interest me AT ALL. Send me as many souls as you can that are DIFFERENT from me. Let me bask in their wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Let me learn different traditions, values, and perspectives. Let me evolve through the richness of immersing myself in the intellectual and emotional realms that are unfamiliar to me. Send me like-INTENTIONED people who too are dedicated to their evolving growth, who are curious, passionate, and kind, and I shall be right at home.
Cathy Domoney
if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.64
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
To embrace the joy of saying no, of boundaries being a possibility for us, is to forgive ourselves. Boundaries are forgiveness because evolving our boundaries stops suppressing our needs, expectations, desires, feelings, and opinions, which forgives our younger selves. Forgiveness grants us permission to grow.
Natalie Lue (The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want)
To refer to plant care as a hobby diminishes the reality of what plants hold. Plants harness a constellation of powers that invite the intellect and incite the soul. On their surface they may simply please the eye, but beneath their stillness they hide a magnitude of depth and contradiction. They await and yearn for understanding. They strive, like any breathing being, to thrive, rather than to merely exist. This task is hardly simple. Plants evolve alongside an evolution in our perceptions. When we work to instill life into a plant, it may too instill life within us.
Summer Rayne Oakes (How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart)
Men, in their libidinal depths, are seeking a divinity to serve and adore. What do I mean by LIBIDINAL DEPTHS? A man’s libidinal depths is his brain and biology. But most importantly it’s his sensual imagination. Don’t bypass that, ladies, because it’s key to the ultimate purpose of your divine feminine in his life. Men don’t have a cheating problem. The problem is most women can’t reach deep enough into their libidinal depths because they themselves are not fully tapped into their own divine feminine or their sensuality. This is my most honest advice to any woman who wants to reach a man deep enough for him to consider her a ‘divinity’ he wants to serve and adore: start by shifting your mindset from ‘conscious’ dating to ‘sensual’ dating. (No, I didn’t say ‘sexual’ dating. Read that again, please). Conscious dating is when you’re in your head space a lot more than you’re in your heart space and body. You can’t genuinely tap into his libidinal depths if you’re more in your head space. Conscious dating is usually for hypergamous women. It’s a ‘conscious’ hunt for bigger and better options. Sadly, this kind of dating is deficient of substance and generally soul depleting. It’s like dating someone who just wants to eat, have a good time, and then expect a marriage proposal. Kind’a superficial, don’t you think? I think there’s a huge need for sapiosexual women in the dating world today. I actually have an even better term for it. I’ve coined it ‘sapioSENSUAL’. The prefix sapio- comes from the Latin verb sapere, meaning “to be wise” or “to have sense.” Dating a sapioSENSUAL woman is a huge turn ON. That’s what men (like me), in their libidinal depths, want and are more than willing to commit to long-term. And ladies, this far transcends a man’s sexual urges. As I often say, you can’t just bring your body, you have to bring your mind and spirit too. This trips a lot of women who are used to ‘conscious’ dating. Dating a sapioSENSUAL is the future. It requires you to be constantly working on cultivating your sensual depth. Newsflash... DEPTH IS THE NEW WORTH. #DeepCallsUntoDeep So ladies, you have to come into the deep if you’re really serious about catching a BIG fish.
Lebo Grand
Leap Beyond Libido (The Sonnet) Brotherhood won't do, Nor will sisterhood. What the world really needs, Is a sense of humanhood. So long as gender lingers, In the behavior of human. We'll not have a society, Free from sexualization. Genitalia have no role in society, Other than in bed. When you leap beyond libido, Even a naked body seems sacred. The body has evolved to crave for release, But a well-built character is hard to please.
Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
People pleasing has the ability to hold you in spaces past the expiration date.
Felicia "Miracle" Hankins
Therefore, we must invest in research that allows us to grow more healthy food and transport it more effectively. And please make no mistake: that includes accepting genetically modified crops, those engineered to include a trait in the plant that doesn’t occur in its wild form, such as resistance to insects, tolerance to drought, greater vitamin A production, or more efficient use of sunlight to convert CO2 to sugar—as an absolutely necessary part of our food future. With more efficient plants, we could feed up to 200 million additional people, just from plants grown in the US Midwest. 33 These crops have gotten a bad rap for being “unnatural,” although many people who hold this view don’t recognize that most of the food we think of as “natural” has already been subject to significant genetic manipulation. The ears of corn you see at the grocery store look nothing like the wild plant from which modern corn came; over the course of nine thousand years, the spindly finger-length grass known as teosinte was cultivated to evolve larger cobs and more rows of plump, soft, sugary kernels, a process of modification that significantly altered the plant’s genome.34 The apples we’ve grown accustomed to eating have a bit more resemblance to their small, wild ancestors, but good luck finding one of those ancestors; they have been nearly wiped off the planet, and that’s no great loss to our diet, since the biggest genetic contributor to modern apples, Malus sylvestris, is so tart it’s darn near inedible.
David A. Sinclair (Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To)
Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.64 Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few). THE
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
That is the point of all this. To make you terrified of a world where you do not rule. Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the strong.” “You should hope that is not true,” Mustang says quietly to me. “Why?” “Because there is a boy here like you.” Her face takes on a gloomy aspect, as though she regrets what she must say. “My Proctor calls him the Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.” Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
As the Model S fever gripped Silicon Valley, I visited Ford’s small research and development lab in Palo Alto. The head of the lab at the time was a ponytailed, sandal-wearing engineer named T. J. Giuli, who felt very jealous of Tesla. Inside of every Ford were dozens of computing systems made by different companies that all had to speak to each other and work as one. It was a mess of complexity that had evolved over time, and simplifying the situation would prove near impossible at this point, especially for a company like Ford, which needed to pump out hundreds of thousands of cars per year and could not afford to stop and reboot. Tesla, by contrast, got to start from scratch and make its own software the focus of the Model S. Giuli would have loved the same opportunity. “Software is in many ways the heart of the new vehicle experience,” he said. “From the powertrain to the warning chimes in the car, you’re using software to create an expressive and pleasing environment. The level of integration that the software has into the rest of the Model S is really impressive. Tesla is a benchmark for what we do here.” Not long after this chat, Giuli left Ford to become an engineer at a stealth start-up. There
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
The next archetype, the Empress, is the Catalyst of the Mind, that which acts upon the conscious mind to change it. The fourth being the Emperor, which is the Experience of the Mind, which is that material stored in the unconscious which creates its continuing bias. Am I correct with those statements? Ra I am Ra. Though far too rigid in your statements, you perceive correct relationships. There is a great deal of dynamic interrelationship in these first four archetypes. (79.36) Questioner Would the Hierophant then be somewhat of a governor or sorter of these effects so as to create the proper assimilation by the unconscious of that which comes through the conscious? Ra I am Ra. Although thoughtful, the supposition is incorrect in its heart. (79.37) Questioner What would be the Hierophant? Ra I am Ra. The Hierophant is the Significator of the Body[57] complex, its very nature. We may note that the characteristics of which you speak do have bearing upon the Significator of the Mind complex but are not the heart. The heart of the mind complex is that dynamic entity which absorbs, seeks, and attempts to learn. (79.38) Questioner Then is the Hierophant the link, you might say, between the mind and the body? Ra I am Ra. There is a strong relationship between the Significators of the mind, the body, and the spirit. Your statement is too broad. (79.39) Questioner Let me skip over the Hierophant for a minute because I’m really not understanding that at all, and just ask you if the Lovers represent the merging of the conscious and the unconscious, or a communication between conscious and unconscious? Ra I am Ra. Again, without being at all unperceptive, you miss the heart of this particular archetype which may be more properly called the Transformation of the Mind. (79.40) Questioner Transformation of the mind into what? Ra I am Ra. As you observe Archetype Six you may see the student of the mysteries being transformed by the need to choose betwixt the light and the dark in mind. (79.41) Questioner Would the Conqueror, or Chariot, then, represent the culmination of the action of the first six archetypes into a conquering of the mental processes, even possibly removing the veil? Ra I am Ra. This is most perceptive. The Archetype Seven is one difficult to enunciate. We may call it the Path, the Way, or the Great Way of the Mind. Its foundation is a reflection and substantial summary of Archetypes One through Six. One may also see the Way of the Mind as showing the kingdom or fruits of appropriate travel through the mind in that the mind continues to move as majestically through the material it conceives of as a chariot drawn by royal lions or steeds. At this time we would suggest one more full query, for this instrument is experiencing some distortions towards pain. (79.42) Questioner Then I will just ask for the one of the archetypes which I am least understanding at this point, if I can use that word at all. I am still very much in the dark, so to speak, with respect to the Hierophant and precisely what it is. Could you give me some other indication of what that is, please? Ra I am Ra. You have been most interested in the Significator which must needs become complex. The Hierophant is the original archetype of mind which has been made complex through the subtile movements of the conscious and unconscious.[58] The complexities of mind were evolved rather than the simple melding of experience from Potentiator to Matrix. The mind itself became an actor possessed of free will and, more especially, will. As the Significator of the mind, the Hierophant has the will to know, but what shall it do with its knowledge, and for what reasons does it seek? The potential[s] of a complex significator are manifold.
Donald Tully Elkins (The Ra Contact: Teaching the Law of One: Volume 2)
There are a lot of Jesuses running around these days. There is the Jesus who wants you to find a good parking spot at the mall. There is the Jesus invoked at music awards, and the one raised like a flag to celebrate capitalism and affluence. There is the Jesus drawing lines about who is in and who is out. And there is the Jesus on both sides of the picket lines. There is the one in the slums, and the one in suburbia, and the one in Africa, and the one in America, and the one in Calgary. There is the Jesus who told Mother Theresa to touch the lepers and love with her hands. There is the one who lead the bravest and kindest of men and women all the way to the end. And then there is the Jesus who supposedly inspired manifestos of hate, crusades, murder, and wars. And then there is the Jesus who likes everything you like, and hates everything, or everyone, you hate and is quite pleased with everything about you. I like that Jesus best sometimes.
Sarah Bessey (Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith)
People, on the other hand, defensively clung to their need to be right no matter how flawed their thinking. “Consciousness enabled by our particularly well-developed brains is what sets us apart,”he managed. He continued with a little more confidence. “Homo sapiens have a uniquely evolved neocortex, prefrontal cortex, and temporal lobes that make us capable of abstract thought, language, problem solving, and introspection.”“Our awareness makes us human then?”“No. It’s not simply a matter of passive awareness. Even slugs and plants have a level of sentience. It’s our ability to harness the power of our minds to gather knowledge, organize it into something relevant, and advance to a more evolved state. Our thoughts are the gateway. We think, therefore, we are.”“And how can we trust our thoughts?”“It’s a matter of intelligence and careful observation. You said yourself that ours is a universe of observable phenomena. The only barrier to apprehending the truth is our own unwillingness to see the world as it is instead of how we prefer it to be.”The professor’s lips nudged into a smile. “Perhaps. Well said, Mr. Hartt.”He turned toward the class. “Our time’s up today. For next class, please read chapters twenty through forty-five. And”—he glanced up at Austin—“be sure to arrive on time for the discussion.”Austin nodded as he stood. “Mr. Hartt, a word with you please?”Dr. Riley said, stuffing his papers into a leather briefcase
Ted Dekker (Identity (Eyes Wide Open #1))