Examine What You Tolerate Quotes

One day, the old wise Socrates walks down the streets, when all of the sudden a man runs up to him "Socrates I have to tell you something about your friend who..." "Hold up" Socrates interrupts him "About the story you're about to tell me, did you put it trough the three sieves?" "Three sieves?" The man asks "What three sieves?" "Let's try it" Socrates says. "The first sieve is the one of truth, did you examine what you were about to tell me if it is true?" Socrates asks. "Well no, I just overheard it" The man says. "Ah, well then you have used the second sieve, the sieve of good?" Socrates asks "Is it something good what you're about to tell me?" "Ehm no, on the contrary" the man answers. "Hmmm" The wise man says "Let's use the third sieve then, is it necessary to tell me what you're so exited about?" "No not necessary" the man says. "Well" Socrates says with a smile "If the story you're about to tell me isn't true, good or necessary, just forget it and don't bother me with it.

Know your worth. Examine what you tolerate!

Examine what you tolerate. What you put up with you end up with. What you allow continues. Reevaluate the costs and your worth.

Everyone's here except for St. Clair." Meredith cranes her neck around the cafeteria. "He's usually running late." "Always," Josh corrects. "Always running late." I clear my throat. "I think I met him last night. In the hallway." "Good hair and an English accent?" Meredith asks. "Um.Yeah.I guess." I try to keep my voice casual. Josh smirks. "Everyone's in luuurve with St. Clair." "Oh,shut up," Meredith says. "I'm not." Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend. He lets go of her hand and gives an exaggerated sigh. "Well,I am. I'm asking him to prom. This is our year, I just know it." "This school has a prom?" I ask. "God no," Rashmi says. "Yeah,Josh. You and St. Clair would look really cute in matching tuxes." "Tails." The English accent makes Meredith and me jump in our seats. Hallway boy. Beautiful boy. His hair is damp from the rain. "I insist the tuxes have tails, or I'm giving your corsage to Steve Carver instead." "St. Clair!" Josh springs from his seat, and they give each other the classic two-thumps-on-the-back guy hug. "No kiss? I'm crushed,mate." "Thought it might miff the ol' ball and chain. She doesn't know about us yet." "Whatever," Rashi says,but she's smiling now. It's a good look for her. She should utilize the corners of her mouth more often. Beautiful Hallway Boy (Am I supposed to call him Etienne or St. Clair?) drops his bag and slides into the remaining seat between Rashmi and me. "Anna." He's surprised to see me,and I'm startled,too. He remembers me. "Nice umbrella.Could've used that this morning." He shakes a hand through his hair, and a drop lands on my bare arm. Words fail me. Unfortunately, my stomach speaks for itself. His eyes pop at the rumble,and I'm alarmed by how big and brown they are. As if he needed any further weapons against the female race. Josh must be right. Every girl in school must be in love with him. "Sounds terrible.You ought to feed that thing. Unless..." He pretends to examine me, then comes in close with a whisper. "Unless you're one of those girls who never eats. Can't tolerate that, I'm afraid. Have to give you a lifetime table ban." I'm determined to speak rationally in his presence. "I'm not sure how to order." "Easy," Josh says. "Stand in line. Tell them what you want.Accept delicious goodies. And then give them your meal card and two pints of blood." "I heard they raised it to three pints this year," Rashmi says. "Bone marrow," Beautiful Hallway Boy says. "Or your left earlobe." "I meant the menu,thank you very much." I gesture to the chalkboard above one of the chefs. An exquisite cursive hand has written out the morning's menu in pink and yellow and white.In French. "Not exactly my first language." "You don't speak French?" Meredith asks. "I've taken Spanish for three years. It's not like I ever thought I'd be moving to Paris." "It's okay," Meredith says quickly. "A lot of people here don't speak French." "But most of them do," Josh adds. "But most of them not very well." Rashmi looks pointedly at him. "You'll learn the lanaguage of food first. The language of love." Josh rubs his belly like a shiny Buddha. "Oeuf. Egg. Pomme. Apple. Lapin. Rabbit." "Not funny." Rashmi punches him in the arm. "No wonder Isis bites you. Jerk." I glance at the chalkboard again. It's still in French. "And, um, until then?" "Right." Beautiful Hallway Boy pushes back his chair. "Come along, then. I haven't eaten either." I can't help but notice several girls gaping at him as we wind our way through the crowd.

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.

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

Imagine us saying to children: "In the last fifty or so years, the human race has become aware of a great deal of information about its mechanisms; how it behaves, how it must behave under certain circumstances. If this is to be useful, you must learn to contemplate these rules calmly, dispassionately, disinterestedly, without emotion. It is information that will set people free from blind loyalties, obedience to slogans, rhetoric, leaders, group emotions." Well, there it is. ...It is interesting to speculate: what country, what nation, when, and where, would have undertaken a programme to teach its children to be people to resist rhetoric, to examine the mechanisms that govern them? I can think of only one - America in that heady period of the Gettysburg Address. And that time could not have survived the Civil War, for when war starts, countries cannot afford disinterested examination of their behaviour. When a war starts, nations go mad - and have to go mad, in order to survive. ...I am not talking of the aptitudes for killing, for destruction, which soldiers are taught as part of their training, but a kind of atmosphere, the invisible poison, which spreads everywhere. And then people everywhere begin behaving as they never could in peace-time. Afterwards we look back, amazed. Did I really do that? Believe that? Fall for that bit of propaganda? Think that all our enemies were evil? That all our own nation's acts were good? How could I have tolerated that state of mind, day after day, month after month - perpetually stimulated, perpetually whipped up into emotions that my mind was meanwhile quietly and desperately protesting against?

Your womb can’t never bear fruit.” Miss Ethel Fordham told her that. Without sorrow or alarm, she had passed along the news as though she’d examined a Burpee seedling overcome by marauding rabbits. Cee didn’t know then what to feel about that news, no more than what she felt about Dr. Beau. Anger wasn’t available to her—she had been so stupid, so eager to please. As usual she blamed being dumb on her lack of schooling, but that excuse fell apart the second she thought about the skilled women who had cared for her, healed her. Some of them had to have Bible verses read to them because they could not decipher print themselves, so they had sharpened the skills of the illiterate: perfect memory, photographic minds, keen senses of smell and hearing. And they knew how to repair what an educated bandit doctor had plundered. If not schooling, then what? Branded early as an unlovable, barely tolerated “gutter child” by Lenore, the only one whose opinion mattered to her parents, exactly like what Miss Ethel said, she had agreed with the label and believed herself worthless. Ida never said, “You my child. I dote on you. You wasn’t born in no gutter. You born into my arms. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” If not her mother, somebody somewhere should have said those words and meant them. Frank alone valued her. While his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her. Should it have? Why was that his job and not her own? Cee didn’t know any soft, silly women. Not Thelma, or Sarah, or Ida, and certainly not the women who had healed her. Even Mrs. K., who let the boys play nasty with her, did hair and slapped anybody who messed with her, in or outside her hairdressing kitchen. So it was just herself. In this world with these people she wanted to be the person who would never again need rescue. Not from Lenore through the lies of the Rat, not from Dr. Beau through the courage of Sarah and her brother. Sun-smacked or not, she wanted to be the one who rescued her own self. Did she have a mind, or not? Wishing would not make it so, nor would blame, but thinking might. If she did not respect herself, why should anybody else? Okay. She would never have children to care about and give her the status of motherhood. Okay. She didn’t have and probably would never have a mate. Why should that matter? Love? Please. Protection? Yeah, sure. Golden eggs? Don’t make me laugh. Okay. She was penniless. But not for long. She would have to invent a way to earn a living. What else?

In that moment she realized he had not been sleeping in the coach when she'd examined the miniature with such detached and puzzled longing. He had seen her take it out, caress it with her thumb, and talk softly to the man whose image it held. Shame and mortification blazed through her. "You saw," she said, red-faced with guilt. "I saw. But I do not condemn. I told you I would give you all the time you need, Juliet. I shall never, ever push you." "I know you won't, but Gareth, although I like you, am very, very fond of you, I ... I may never be able to love any man the way I loved Charles, and that is unfair to you." "Juliet."  He smiled with gentle tolerance, his hand caressing the side of her face. "My dearest Juliet. I knew when I asked you to marry me that you still loved him. I knew where your heart lay, where your thoughts lingered. I have always known, and I do not suffer any delusions that you may ever come to think of me in the same way that you did Charles. I accept that. Do you not see?" "Oh, Gareth..."  She shook her head, guilt twisting her heart. "What about you? What about how you feel about me?" "My dear," he said gently, "I should think that that is painfully obvious." She

The Benefits of Suffering Not only is sickness an inherent part of life, it is often beneficial one. Nietzsche found that the most brilliant parts of his writings co-occurred with bodily weakness and suffering. He felt that failures, anxieties, deprivations and mistakes, were necessary for him, just as their opposites 'the path of one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own hell'. Those who cannot endure their suffering and try desperately to eliminate it, encourage neglectfulness remissness, and by their efforts rule out happiness 'For happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, we all grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together'. The two, health and illness, cannot be separated; the ability to tolerate sickness defines health; and illness is a trigger for a new learning 'as important survival supporting signal, and hurt, conditions people to avoid dangers and protect themselves 'some storm is approaching, and we do well to 'catch' as little wind as possible'. Moreover, 'illness may even act as a powerful stimulus to life, to an abundance of life,' exemplified by Nietzsche, who after a prolonged sickness, rediscovered life, enjoyed it even more, and transformed his suffering into his new philosophy. Nietzsche rejected the conception of suffering as an argument against existence, and pointed out that there were ages in which people tolerated suffering 'and saw in it an enchantment of the first order, a genuine seduction to life. Perhaps in those days [. . .] pain did not hurt as much as it does now'. Furthermore, for healthy people, 'being sick can even become an energetic stimulus for life, for living more'. His long period of sickness seemed to him 'as it were, I discovered life anew, including myself; I tasted all good and even little things, as others cannot easily taste them. I turned my will to health, to life, into a philosophy'. Nietzsche felt that he owed his philosophy to Amor Fati, to a higher kind of health, to his prolonged illness 'It is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipator of the spirit'. Pain teaches strong suspicion which enable seeing things from different perspectives, seeming them different from what they seem to be. A great torturing long pain 'compels us, philosophers, to descend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and mediocrity'. Having to live with pain and suffering, Nietzsche tried not only to persevere, but to turn it into great suffering, thus turning a constraint into an opportunity, and the list of advantages is telling: 'Prophetic human beings are afflicted with a great deal of suffering [. . .] it is their path that makes them prophets'. Pain and sickness do not necessarily make people any better, but they do make them deeper, and without them the great suspicion which liberates the spirit and a philosophical examination of life will probably be lost 'Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit'. Persons who experienced severe suffering become ones who know much about a terrifying world, about which others have no clue 'Deep suffering makes noble; it separates'. The ability to discover happiness in the midst of 'weariness, in the old illness, in the convalescent's relapses', is a sign of the free spirit, who can remain grateful, see the bright side of things and furthermore, after periods of sickness get cured of pessimism

A couple recently came to my office. Let’s call them Mark and Elizabeth Schuler. They came in for a consultation at Elizabeth’s request. Mark’s best friend was a stockbroker who had handled the couple’s investment portfolio for decades. All they wanted from me was a second opinion. If all went well, they planned to stop working within five years. After a quick chat about their goals, I organized the mess of financial paperwork they’d brought and set about assessing their situation. As my team and I prepared their “Retirement Map Review,” it was immediately apparent the Schulers were carrying significant market risk. We scheduled a follow-up appointment for two weeks later. When they returned, I asked them to estimate their comfortable risk tolerance. In other words, how much of their savings could they comfortably afford to have exposed to stock market losses? Elizabeth laughed at the question. “We’re not comfortable losing any of it,” she said. I had to laugh too. Of course, no one wants to lose any of their money. But with assets housed in mutual funds, 401(k)s, and stocks, there’s always going to be some measure of risk, not to mention fees to maintain such accounts. We always stand to lose something. So how much could they tolerate losing and still be okay to retire? The Schulers had to think about that for a while. After some quick calculations and hurried deliberation, they finally came up with a number. “I guess if we’re just roughly estimating,” Mark said, “I could see us subjecting about 10 percent of our retirement savings to the market’s ups and downs and still being all right.” Can you guess what percentage of their assets were at risk? After a careful examination of the Schulers’ portfolio, my team and I discovered 100 percent of their portfolio was actually invested in individual stocks—an investment option with very high risk! In fact, a large chunk of the Schulers’ money was invested in Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), a utility company that has been around for over one hundred years. Does that name sound familiar? When I met with the Schulers, PG&E stock was soaring. But you may remember the company name from several 2019 news headlines in which the electric and natural gas giant was accused of negligence that contributed to 30 billion dollars’ worth of damage caused by California wild fires. In the wake of that disaster, the company’s stock dropped by more than 60 percent in a matter of months. That’s how volatile individual stocks can be.

You fuckin’ guys! You have no idea what it’s like on this side of the little paper smock. You ever been in one of those managed-care Sam’s Clubs? You can’t just let your fingers do the walking. Then I read this article, and I almost hemorrhaged when I found out there are medical seminars teaching doctors how to manipulate a patient’s wait—they’ve actually done cost studies on how long people will tolerate the lobby, when to move them to the examining room, and how long they’ll wait there. Which is longer than you’d expect because, after all, ho! ho!—you’re in The Room! Then they instruct doctors to chop up the wait some more by sending in the nurses for blood pressure and other tap dancing. And you’re thinking, Hey, foolish to leave now—this is almost like actual treatment!

Consequently, when Muslims today say they revere Jesus and even that they recognize Christianity as a legitimate faith, they are being disingenuous. For the Christianity that the Koran recognizes is not Christianity as millions practice it around the world today. This is a key source of much of the enduring suspicion and mistrust between Muslims and Christians. The Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qadhi expatiated on the Koranic view of mainstream Christianity in a recent sermon, in which he also elaborated a contemptuous view of Christian charity:            Today we will talk about one of the distorted religions, about a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness . . . about Christianity, this false faith, and about the people whom Allah described in his book as deviating from the path of righteousness. We will examine their faith, and we will review their history, full of hate, abomination, and wars against Islam and the Muslims. In this distorted and deformed religion, to which many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path of righteousness by talking about the concept of the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three who are one.                   . . . They see Jesus, peace be upon him, as the son of Allah. . . . It is the Christians who believe Jesus was crucified. According to them, he was hanged on the cross with nails pounded through his hands, and he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” According to them, this was so that he would atone for the sins of mankind. . . . Regardless of all these deviations from the path of righteousness, it is possible to see many Muslims . . . who know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans. . . . After all this, we still find people who promote the idea of bringing our religion and theirs closer, as if the differences were miniscule and could be eliminated by arranging all those [interfaith] conferences, whose goal is political.18 The idea that Christianity is a “distorted, deformed religion” created by people who were bent on rejecting the prophet Muhammad fuels a great deal of Muslim hatred for Christianity, Christians, and the West to this day.