“
only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
“
It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
“
In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ...
It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.
”
”
Stefan Zweig (Chess Story)
“
But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Handle with Care)
“
The contemporary sedentary is someone who feels at home everywhere, thanks to cellphones, and the nomad is someone who does not feel at home anywhere, someone who is excluded, ostracized.
”
”
Paul Virilio (The Administration of Fear)
“
Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in the square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.
”
”
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
“
Built into the very structure of the egoic self is a need to oppose, resist, and exclude to maintain the sense of separateness on which its continued survival depends. So there is “me” against the “other,” “us” against “them.” The ego needs to be in conflict with something or someone. That explains why you are looking for peace and joy and love but cannot tolerate them for very long. You say you want happiness but are addicted to your unhappiness. Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.
”
”
Eckhart Tolle (Stillness Speaks)
“
I believed we could know what was happening to us. We were not excluded from our own lives. That is not my head on someone else's body in the photograph that's introduced as evidence. I didn't believe that nations play-act on a grand scale. I lived in the real.
”
”
Don DeLillo (Underworld)
“
The smaller the dinner table, the better the side conversation: you can gossip about the guests without fearing whether you will be overheard. It just isn't good table manners to exclude someone from their own ridicule. That's why the juiciest side conversations occur at a table for one.
”
”
Bauvard (The Prince Of Plungers)
“
Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire.
”
”
Noam Chomsky (Language and Thought (Anshen Transdisciplinary Lectureships in Art, Science and the Philosophy of Culture, #3))
“
I’ve learned to bully doesn’t only involve attacking someone physically or verbally; it is so much more. Bullying consists of invading other people’s property, humiliation, mind games (pretending to be someone’s friend), manipulation, making threats, spreading rumors, showing aggressive behavior, and/or excluding someone from a group on purpose.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (Teachers Just Don't Understand Bullying Hurts)
“
Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders—even in their own homes.
Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins.
And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.
”
”
Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
“
If, in your attempt to follow Jesus, you exclude, condemn or discriminate against someone, you are doing it wrong.
”
”
Rev. Kellen Roggenbuck
“
In case you didn't know, in secondary school - especially in the early years of secondary school - diversity is not celebrated. In secondary school, being different is the worst crime you can commit. Actually, in secondary school, being different is pretty much the only crime you can commit.Most of the things the UN considers crimes are not considered crimes at secondary school. Being cruel is fine. Being brutal is fine. Being obnoxious is fine. Being superficial is especially fine. Explosive acts of violence are fine. taking pleasure in the humiliation of others is fine. Holding someone's head down the toilet is fine (and the weaker the someone, and the dirtier the toilet, the finer it is). None of these things will hurt your social standing. But being different - that's unforgivable. Being different is the fast-track to
Pariah Town. a pariah is someone who's excluded from mainstream society. And if you know that at twelve years of age, you're probably an inhabitant of Pariah Town.
”
”
Gavin Extence (The Universe Versus Alex Woods)
“
At this point there's something I should explain about myself, which is that I don't talk much, probably too little, and I think this has been detrimental to my social life. It's not that I have trouble expressing myself, or no more than people generally have when they're trying to put something complex into words. I'd even say I have less trouble than most because my long involvement with literature has given me a better-than-average capacity for handling language. But I have no gift for small talk, and there's no point trying to learn or pretend; it wouldn't be convincing. My conversational style is spasmodic (someone once described it as "hollowing"). Every sentence opens up gaps, which require new beginnings. I can't maintain any continuity. In short, I speak when I have something to say. My problem, I suppose - and this may be an effect of involvement with literature - is that I attribute too much importance to the subject. For me, it's never simply a question of "talking" but always a question of "what to talk about". And the effort of weighing up potential subjects kills the spontaneity of dialogue. In other words, when everything you say has to be "worth the effort", it's too much effort to go on talking. I envy people who can launch into a conversation with gusto and energy, and keep it going. I envy them that human contact, so full of promise, a living reality from which, in my mute isolation, I feel excluded. "But what do they talk about?" I wonder, which is obviously the wrong question to ask. The crabbed awkwardness of my social interactions is a result of this failing on my part. Looking back, I can see that it was responsible for most of my missed opportunities and almost all the woes of solitude. The older I get, the more convinced I am that this is a mutilation, for which my professional success cannot compensate, much less my "rich inner life." And I've never been able to resolve the conundrum that conversationalists pose for me: how do they keep coming up with things to talk about? I don't even wonder about it anymore, perhaps because I know there's no answer.
”
”
César Aira
“
Sharing our experience with someone who loves and supports us helps us feel less isolated and alone with our shame. Because the whole point of shame is to shun and exclude us, reconncecting with loving friends combats shame and keeps our foibles in perspective. Reconnecting with people who love us reminds us of our worth and value.
”
”
Wendy Ulrich
“
There was always, among them, such a stew of envy and longing. They hated the humans, but they also wanted to be them. They wanted to punish them, and they wanted to be embraced by them. To be accepted, honored, loved, like someone’s child. And since they couldn’t have any of it, it all took the form of spite. Anyone who has ever been excluded can understand what they felt, and no one has ever been quite so excluded as they.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1))
“
But there is virtually no relationship between being an expert and being seen as someone people can trust with their secrets, doubts, and vulnerabilities. A petty office tyrant or micromanager may be high on expertise, but will be so low on trust that it will undermine their ability to manage, and effectively exclude them from informal networks.
”
”
Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence)
“
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
“
In the past, one would have been arrested for wanting to leave. Now that nobody was stopping us from emigrating, we were no longer welcome on the other side. The only thing that had changed was the color of the police uniforms. We risked being arrested not in the name of our own government but in the name of other states, those same governments who had urged us to break free. The West had spent decades criticizing the East for its closed borders, funding campaigns to demand freedom of movement, condemning the immorality of states committed to restricting the right to exit. Our exiles used to be received as heroes. Now they were treated as criminals.
Perhaps freedom of movement had never really mattered. It was easy to defend it when someone else was doing the dirty work of imprisonment. But what value does the right to exit have if there is no right to enter? Were borders and walls reprehensible only when they served to keep people in, as opposed to keeping them out? The border guards, the patrol boats, the detention and repression of immigrants that were pioneered in southern Europe for the first time in those years [1990s] would become standard practice over the coming decades. The West, initially unprepared for the arrival of thousands of people wanting a different future, would soon perfect a system for excluding the most vulnerable and attracting the more skilled, all the while defending borders to "protect our way of life." And yet, those who sought to emigrate did so because they were attracted to that way of life. Far from posing a threat to the system, they were its most ardent supporters.
”
”
Lea Ypi (Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History)
“
…Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk."
He stopped his actions when I spoke up.
"You probably know this already, but I'm not a prophet. No, I am as far removed from such a being as you can get."
Ever since we got into a tussle back on the Dongho Bridge, I had never introduced myself properly once. To Yoo Joonghyuk, I was the prophet, a man with a mysterious background.
"I'm not the 'Demon King of Salvation'."
[Story, 'Demon King of Salvation', has stopped its storytelling.]
"I'm also not the 'King of a Kingless World'."
[Story, 'King of a Kingless World', has stopped its storytelling.]
One by one, my Stories stopped their stories. Excluding my own, everything else became dead still.
"My name is Kim Dokja."
The wings on my back disappeared, and the ballooned-up muscles shrunk back, too.
"Twenty-eight… No, wait. I was twenty-eight, and I was an employee of a game company.
My hobby was reading web novels…"
As if I was talking to someone I met for the first time, I continued to tell my own story.
"It's pathetic, right? Well, this is who I am… Yoo Joonghyuk, who are you?"
To me, Yoo Joonghyuk was someone I 'knew' since from a long time ago. To be more specific, he was someone I read about all by myself.
That was why I had never heard about his story in his own words.
He finally opened his mouth.
"I am Yoo Joonghyuk."
His blade slowly moved and cut me down.
"Yoo Joonghyuk, a former Regressor.
”
”
singNsong
“
Can anyone capable of genuinely appreciating Mozart and Mizoguchi possibly say that he is not, in that respect, immeasurably better off than someone whose cultural horizon is limited to bingo and The Black and White Minstrel Show? The assimilation will not necessarily make him a better person (a common, and obviously fallacious, assumption), but it will open to him possibilities that are closed to his less fortunate fellow humans. If that is what is meant by an "élite," then I for one shall not willingly sacrifice my membership of it in the name of some perverse and destructive egalitarianism: to put it succinctly, nothing is ever going to come between me and The Magic Flute. It is not, however, an elite from which I would wish anyone to feel excluded: on the contrary, I would like to share my advantages with as many others as possible. That is why I am a teacher.
”
”
Robin Wood
“
How people are excluded is important,’ he said. ‘When we dislike someone, or feel threatened by someone, the natural tendency is to focus on something we dislike about the person, something that irritates us. Unfortunately, when we do this – instead of seeing the deeper beauty of the person and giving them energy – we take energy away and actually do them harm. All they know is that they suddenly feel less beautiful and less confident, and it is because we sapped their energy.
”
”
James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy: how to refresh your approach to tomorrow with a new understanding, energy and optimism)
“
This, after all, is the literal level on which the incident took place. She asked him to hit her and when he said he didn’t want to, she wanted to stop having sex. So why, despite its factual accuracy, does this feel like a dishonest way of narrating what happened? What is the missing element, the excluded part of the story that explains what upset them both? It has something to do with their history, he knows that. Ever since school he has understood his power over her. How she responds to his look or the touch of his hand. The way her face colours, and she goes still as if awaiting some spoken order. His effortless tyranny over someone who seems, to other people, so invulnerable. He has never been able to reconcile himself to the idea of losing this hold over her, like a key to an empty property, left available for future use. In fact he has cultivated it, and he knows he has.
What’s left for them, then? There doesn’t seem to be a halfway position anymore. Too much has passed between them for that. So it’s over, and they’re just nothing? What would it even mean, to be nothing to her? He could avoid her, but as soon as he saw her again, even if they only glanced at one another outside a lecture hall, the glance could not contain nothing. He could never really want it to. He has sincerely wanted to die, but he has never sincerely wanted Marianne to forget about him. That’s the only part of himself he wants to protect, the part that exists inside her.
”
”
Sally Rooney (Normal People)
“
Even nowadays, children are often left at home during funerals, like dogs. Why should children be excluded from funerals when they’re so welcome at christenings and weddings? Not only can their presence be therapeutic for other adults and useful reminders that life, whatever death may do, goes on; not only is it unlikely that very young children will be upset, simply because they have only a vague idea of the concept of death. But not attending the funeral of someone close can be tremendously damaging for some people in later life. Middle-aged people who were not allowed to attend the funerals of grandparents or even parents, can still feel full of rage and sorrow.
”
”
Virginia Ironside (Youll Get Over It: The Rage Of Bereavement)
“
Perfectionism sometimes appears as a fear of saying anything that is politically off-base and being judged, so that people don't share their opinions; or are wildly defensive if someone questions something they said; or quickly attack or exclude anyone who doesn't use the same jargon as them or is still learning something they already know about.
”
”
Dean Spade (Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next))
“
It never fails to baffle me that someone could be bored in a bookshop, with the possible exception of someone who can’t read, which pretty much excludes all adults.
”
”
Shaun Bythell (Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops)
“
as a general proposition, until very recently, vice presidents have always been excluded because it is unsettling to have someone around you whose happiest moment will be when you drop dead.
”
”
Jared Cohen (Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America)
“
In Japan, however, if you against someone and create a bad atmosphere, your relations may break-off completely. People tend to react emotionally, and most are afraid of being excluded from the group.
”
”
Roger J. Davies (The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture)
“
For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“
Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders—even in their own homes.
Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins.
And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.
”
”
Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
“
Ordinary language fixes the difference between handmade images like Goya's and photographs by the convention that artists "make" drawings and paintings while photographers "take" photographs. But the photographic image, even to the extent that it is a trace (not a construction made out of disparate photographic traces), cannot be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.
”
”
Susan Sontag (Regarding the Pain of Others)
“
Questioner: Why do we love our mothers so much? KRISHNAMURTI: Do you love your mother if you hate your father? Listen carefully. When you love somebody very much, do you exclude others from that love? If you really love your mother, don’t you also love your father, your aunt, your neighbour, your servant? Don’t you have the feeling of love first, and then the love of someone in particular? When you say, “I love my mother very much,” are you not being considerate of her? Can you then give her a lot of meaningless trouble? And if you are considerate of your mother, are you not also considerate of your brother, your sister, your neighbour? Otherwise you don’t really love your mother; it is just a word, a convenience.
”
”
J. Krishnamurti (Think on These Things)
“
All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.
So at all events thought old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley, the devoted missionaries who lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always travelled third on the railways, and never came to the club. In our Father's house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart.
And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No, but young Mr. Sorley, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Sorley's mind but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.
”
”
E.M. Forster (A Passage to India)
“
More daunting for those who hope for scientific and social progress, the genetic argument is easily used to justify all kinds of inequalities and injustices that are otherwise hard to defend. It serves a deeply conservative function: if a phenomenon like addiction is determined mostly by biological heredity, we are spared from having to look at how our social environment supports, or does not support, the parents of young children and at how social attitudes, prejudices, and policies burden, stress, and exclude certain segments of the population and thereby increase their propensity for addiction. The writer Louis Menand said it well in a New Yorker article: “It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.
”
”
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
“
As life advances and we have to give up the hopes, dreams, and desires of our youth, we acquire a growing sense of being a victim of the world and of other people. There is always someone else to blame for our misfortunes or failures, someone we wish to exclude.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Angel's Game)
“
Criminalizing fathers and mothers is closely followed by the criminalization of children. Another recent hysteria concerns “bullying,” another new quasi-crime with no clear definition. Yet it is replete with programs and spending to “raise awareness,” in the words of First Lady Michelle Obama, so that what everyone thought was adolescent misbehavior is in fact a federal civil rights violation and perhaps a federal crime. The US government’s “interagency bullying-resource web site” includes such infractions as “teasing,” “name-calling,” and “excluding someone from a group on purpose.
”
”
Stephen Baskerville
“
People have seen that I intend to sweep away everything we have been taught to consider - without question - as grace and beauty; but have overlooked my work to substitute a vaster beauty, touching all objects and beings, not excluding the most despised - and because of that, all the more exhilarating....
I would like people to look at my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values, and, in any case, make no mistake, a work of ardent celebration....
I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range... I am struck by the high value, for a man, of a simple permanent fact, like the miserable vista on which the window of his room opens daily, that comes, with the passing of time, to have an important role in his life. I often think that the highest destination at which a work of art can aim is to take on that function in someone's life.
”
”
Jean Dubuffet
“
An old story is told about Rabia of Basra, an eighth-century Sufi mystic who was seen running through the streets of her city one day carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she said she wanted to burn down the rewards of paradise with the torch and put out the fires of hell with the water, because both blocked the way to God. "O, Allah," Rabia prayed, "if I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.
”
”
Barbara Brown Taylor (Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others)
“
many people mistaken for entrepreneurs fail to have true skin in the game in the sense that their aim is to either cash out by selling the company they helped create to someone else, or “go public” by issuing shares in the stock market. The true value of the company, what it makes, and its long-term survival are of small relevance to them. This is a pure financing scheme and we will exclude this class of people from our “entrepreneur” risk-taker class (this form of entrepreneurship is the equivalent of bringing great-looking and marketable children into the world with the sole aim of selling them at age four). We can easily identify them by their ability to write a convincing business plan.
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life)
“
It’s fucking frustrating, isn’t it? To be right there, on the edge emotionally, needing something from someone you love, yet they won’t give it to you. It’s no fun when you beg for something from a person who is supposed to love you with their entire soul. I want you to remember this the next time you exclude me from your brilliant plans and ignore my pleas,
”
”
Randi Cooley Wilson (Restoration (The Revelation, #5))
“
From the recent Balkan Wars, journalist Slavenka Drakulic observed that “someone is always a Jew. Once the concept of ‘otherness’ takes root, the unimaginable becomes possible.”8 She continues, “Once excluded, [people] become aliens. Not-me. Not-us. You still feel responsible but in a different way, as towards beggars. . . . The feeling of human solidarity turns into an issue of my personal ethics. . . . You are no longer obliged to do something for their sake.”9 This is true of anyone we place in special categories—refugees, veterans, victims, and survivors, as well as enemies—even though they may be our neighbors. In the British movie Pretty Dirty Things, one migrant shouts at another, “I’m a certified refugee. You’re an illegal. You have nothing. You are nothing.
”
”
Edward Tick (War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-tramatic Stress Disorder)
“
The thing about awkward people was that they made so many mistakes, you could make your own around them. They wouldn’t ding you for it. From their presence, you could be yourself around them and simply release. It was strangely relieving being around someone who made you uncomfortable. Not only were they interesting to watch, but you could do just about anything with them. It was as if some bodies were made of an all-purpose fiber that excluded no activity from its nature.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
“
Victor wasn’t sure how he felt about EOs. Up until he
fetched Sydney from the side of the road, he’d only ever known one EO, himself excluded, and that was Eli. If he’d had to judge based on the two of them, then ExtraOrdinaries were damaged, to say the least. But these words people threw around—humans, monsters, heroes, villains—to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a
hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. The difference between Victor and Eli, he suspected, wasn’t their opinion on EOs. It was their reaction to
them. Eli seemed intent to slaughter them, but Victor didn’t see why a useful skill should be destroyed, just because of its origin. EOs were weapons, yes, but weapons with minds and wills and bodies, things that could be bent and twisted and broken and used.
”
”
Victoria Schwab
“
So how, you might ask, do I exclude generously? This issue comes up a lot when I’m organizing large, complicated meetings for clients. These are some of the questions I ask them:
Who not only fits but also helps fulfill the gathering’s purpose?
Who threatens the purpose?
Who, despite being irrelevant to the purpose, do you feel obliged to
invite?
When my clients answer the first two questions, they begin to grasp their gathering’s true purpose. Obviously people who fit and fulfill your gathering’s purpose need to be there. And, though this one is harder, people who manifestly threaten the purpose are easy to justify excluding. (That doesn’t mean they always end up being excluded. Politeness and habit often defeat the facilitator. But the hosts still know deep down who shouldn’t be there.)
It is the third question where purpose begins to be tested. Someone threatens a gathering’s purpose? You can see why to keep him out. But what’s wrong with someone who’s irrelevant to the purpose? What’s wrong with inviting Bob? Every gathering has its Bobs. Bob in marketing. Bob your friend’s girlfriend’s brother. Bob your visiting aunt. Bob is perfectly pleasant and doesn’t actively sabotage your gathering. Most Bobs are grateful to be included. They sometimes bring extra effort or an extra bottle of wine. You’ve probably been a Bob. I certainly have. The crux of excluding thoughtfully and intentionally is mustering the courage to keep away your Bobs. It is to shift your perception so that you understand that people who aren’t fulfilling the purpose of your gathering are detracting from it, even if they do nothing to detract from it. This is because once they are actually in your presence, you (and other considerate guests) will want to welcome and include them, which takes time and attention away from what (and who) you’re actually there for. Particularly in smaller gatherings, every single person affects the dynamics of a group. Excluding well and purposefully is reframing who and what you are being generous to—your guests and your purpose.
”
”
Priya Parker (The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters)
“
When someone engages in the spread of lies, hate, and other societal poisons, they should be stigmatized accordingly. It is not just shameful but dangerous that the purveyors of the worst behaviors on social media have enjoyed increased fame and fortune, all the way up to invitations to the White House. Stopping these bad actors requires setting an example and ensuring that repeat offenders never escape the gravity of their past actions and are excluded from the institutions and platforms of power that now matter most in our society.
”
”
P.W. Singer (Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media)
“
If being transgender were a job, no-one would apply.
Imagine actually applying to be an outcast everywhere you go, feeling out of place even inside your own body, even when looking in a mirror, at old family photo albums, being continually denied by family members you held dear, being barely recognized or even acknowledged by old acquaintances, school or college friends, and taking the brunt of bigotry and spitefulness from colleagues and supervisors?
Does being excluded from family events, work parties, and being constantly attacked by religious groups and people sound like fun? How about constantly wondering if you will wake up with civil rights the next morning, or if you will be arrested or beaten up or murdered in the streets by someone you don’t know, or in your own home by someone you do know? How about the likelihood that your family would dress your dead body as someone else they would prefer you to have been for your memorial service, while dead-naming you and disrespecting the person you were and the things you had accomplished in your life? Sound like the job for you? Apply within.
If there was a CHOICE, then my dears, EVERYONE would walk away.
”
”
Christina Engela (Pearls Before Swine)
“
But a feeling is only a feeling. There’s no right or wrong. There’s just my feeling and yours. We are wiser not to try to reason others out of their feelings, or try to cheer them up. It’s better to allow their feelings and keep them company, to say, “Tell me more.” To resist saying what I used to tell my children when they were upset because someone had teased or excluded them: “I know how you feel.” It’s a lie. You can’t ever know how someone else feels. It’s not happening to you. To be empathetic and supportive, don’t take on other people’s inner life as if it is your own. That’s just another way of robbing others of their experience—and of keeping them stuck.
”
”
Edith Eger (The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life)
“
But Jesus will not be a means to an end; he will not be used. If he calls you to follow him, he must be the goal. Does that sound like fanaticism? Not if you understand the difference between religion and the gospel. Remember what religion is: advice on how you must live to earn your way to God. Your job is to follow that advice to the best of your ability. If you follow it but don’t get carried away, then you have moderation. But if you feel like you’re following it faithfully and completely, you’ll believe you have a connection with God because of your right living and right belief, and you’ll feel superior to people who have wrong living and wrong belief. That’s a slippery slope: If you feel superior to them, you stay away from them. That makes it easier to exclude them, then to hate them, and ultimately to oppress them. And there are some Christians like that—not because they’ve gone too far and been too committed to Jesus, but because they haven’t gone far enough. They aren’t as fanatically humble and sensitive, or as fanatically understanding and generous as Jesus was. Why not? They’re still treating Christianity as advice instead of good news. The gospel isn’t advice: It’s the good news that you don’t need to earn your way to God; Jesus has already done it for you. And it’s a gift that you receive by sheer grace—through God’s thoroughly unmerited favor. If you seize that gift and keep holding on to it, then Jesus’s call won’t draw you into fanaticism or moderation. You will be passionate to make Jesus your absolute goal and priority, to orbit around him; yet when you meet somebody with a different set of priorities, a different faith, you won’t assume that they’re inferior to you. You’ll actually seek to serve them rather than oppress them. Why? Because the gospel is not about choosing to follow advice, it’s about being called to follow a King. Not just someone with the power and authority to tell you what needs to be done—but someone with the power and authority to do what needs to be done, and then to offer it to you as good news.
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (Jesus the King)
“
The key to this process,” Sanchez said, “is to speak up when it is your moment and to project energy when it is someone else’s time.” “Many things can go wrong,” Julia interjected. “Some people get inflated when in a group. They feel the power of an idea and express it, then because that burst of energy feels so good, they keep on talking, long after the energy should have shifted to someone else. They try to monopolize the group. “Others are pulled back and even when they feel the power of an idea, they won’t risk saying it. When this happens, the group fragments and the members don’t get the benefit of all the messages. The same thing happens when some members of the group are not accepted by some of the others. The rejected individuals are prevented from receiving the energy and so the group misses the benefit of their ideas.” Julia paused and we both looked at Sanchez who was taking a breath to speak. “How people are excluded is important,” he said. “When we dislike someone, or feel threatened by someone, the natural tendency is to focus on something we dislike about the person, something that irritates us. Unfortunately, when we do this—instead of seeing the deeper beauty of the person and giving them energy—we take energy away and actually do them harm. All they know is that they suddenly feel less beautiful and less confident, and it is because we sapped their energy.” “That is why,” Julia said, “this process is so important. Humans are aging each other at a tremendous rate out there with their violent competitions.” “But remember,” Sanchez added, “in a truly functional group, the idea is to do the opposite of this, the idea is for every member’s energy and vibration to increase because of the energy sent by all of the others. When this occurs, everyone’s individual energy field merges with everyone else’s and makes one pool of energy. It is as if the group is just one body, but one with many heads. Sometimes one head speaks for the body. Sometimes another talks. But in a group functioning this way, each individual knows when to speak and what to say because he truly sees life more clearly.
”
”
James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy (Celestine Prophecy, #1))
“
The church would have no choice but to formally remove them from the fellowship. This doesn’t mean that everyone who remains in the church is perfect. We’re all sinners. But that’s not the issue. The issue is about the one who hardens his or her heart toward their sin and refuses to acknowledge and turn from it. When that happens, the church is obligated by none other than Christ himself to dismiss them from the recognized community of faith. This is a somber and humble but necessary step. As Christians, our goal should be never to give up on someone. So even if the church has to move to exclude someone from the fellowship, they should still be attempting to reach out to that person and win them to the Lord.
”
”
Eric J. Bargerhuff (The Most Misused Verses in the Bible: Surprising Ways God's Word Is Misunderstood)
“
She felt that she was trembling. She studied Clerfayt. He asked no questions. I don’t have to explain anything to him, she thought. He takes me at my word. What to me is the decision of my life is to him only the kind of ordinary decision people make every day. Perhaps he doesn’t even think me particularly sick; I suppose it takes an auto smashup to convince him that someone is really incapacitated. She felt to her surprise as if a burden she had borne for years were sliding from her shoulders. Here was the first person in years who was not concerned about her illness. It made her happy in a strange way. It was as if she had crossed a frontier hitherto impassable to her. Her sickness, which had always been like an opaque window between herself and the world, no longer existed, at least for the moment. Instead, life lay outspread before her, breathtakingly clear and wide, flooded with moonlight; life with clouds and valleys and happenings. And she belonged to it, she was no longer excluded from it; she stood like all the others, the healthy people, at the starting point, a burning, crackling torch in her hand, ready for the steep drop, the rush down and into life. What had Clerfayt said once? That the most desirable thing in life was to be able to choose your own death, because then death could not kill you like a rat or extinguish you, suffocate you, when you were not ready. She was ready. She trembled, but she was ready.
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (Heaven Has No Favorites)
“
When man loves as a biological hypostasis, he inevitably excludes others: the family has priority in love over "strangers," the husband lays exclusive claim to the love of his wife - facts altogether understandable and "natural" for the biological hypostasis. For a man to love someone who is not a member of his family more than his own relations constitutes a transcendence of the exclusiveness which is present in the biological hypostasis. Thus a characteristic of the ecclesial hypostasis is the capacity of the person to love without exclusiveness, and to do this not out of conformity with a moral commandment ("Love thy neighbor," etc.), but out of his "hypostatic constitution," out of the fact that his new birth from the womb of the Church has made him part of a network of relationships which transcends every exclusiveness.
”
”
John D. Zizoulas
“
When man loves as a biological hypostasis, he inevitably excludes others: the family has priority in love over "strangers," the husband lays exclusive claim to the love of his wife - facts altogether understandable and "natural" for the biological hypostasis. For a man to love someone who is not a member of his family more than his own relations constitutes a transcendence of the exclusiveness which is present in the biological hypostasis. Thus a characteristic of the ecclesial hypostasis is the capacity of the person to love without exclusiveness, and to do this not out of conformity with a moral commandment ("Love thy neighbor," etc.), but out of his "hypostatic constitution," out of the fact that his new birth from the womb of the Church has made him part of a network of relationships which transcends every exclusiveness.
”
”
John D. Zizioulas (Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church)
“
This, after all, is the literal level on which the incident took place. She asked him to hit her and when he said he didn’t want to, she wanted to stop having sex. So why, despite its factual accuracy, does this feel like a dishonest way of narrating what happened? What is the missing element, the excluded part of the story that explains what upset them both? It has something to do with their history, he knows that. Ever since school he has understood his power over her. How she responds to his look or the touch of his hand. The way her face colours, and she goes still as if awaiting some spoken order. His effortless tyranny over someone who seems, to other people, so invulnerable. He has never been able to reconcile himself to the idea of losing this hold over her, like a key to an empty property, left available for future use. In fact he has cultivated it, and he knows he has.
”
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Sally Rooney (Normal People)
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In an attempt to ruin my reputation in the society, if some extremist group makes a deepfake video of me forcefully trying to have sex with a woman and puts it up on the internet, you literally have no way of not believing that it's me. And while there is nothing wrong with having sex (pedophilia, infidelity, promiscuity excluded), consent is the line between human behavior and bestiality. Suddenly all my words and ideas would turn meaningless in your eyes. The only thing that may - just may - keep you from not believing your eyes, is your understanding of my work. However, that's exactly the kind of world we are heading towards, where anyone can cook up any kind of video of someone to ruin their reputation… Keeping this in mind, we must proceed. We must raise our children with all the courage we can muster so that they can tackle the dark side of technology without committing suicide.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (The Gospel of Technology)
“
Dave does extra-mural work for the University, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave’s pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to me a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave’s pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave’s pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding University vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that. They are prepared within certain limits to alter their views. Many of them arrive as theosophists and depart as Critical Realists or Bradeians. It is remarkable how Dave’s criticism seems os often to be purely catalytic in its action. He blazes upon them with the destructive fury of the sun, but instead of shrivelling up their metaphysical pretensions, achieves merely their metamorphosis from one rich stage into another. This curious fact makes me think that perhaps after all Dave is, in spite of himself, a good teacher. Occasionally he succeeds in converting some peculiarly receptive youth to his own brand of linguistics analysis; after which as often as not the youth loses interest in philosophy altogether. To watch Dave at work on these young men is like watching someone prune a rose bush. It is all the strongest and most luxuriant shoots which have to come off. Then later perhaps there will be blossoms; but not philosophical ones, Dave trusts. His great aim is to dissuade the young from philosophy. He always warns me off it with particular earnestness.
”
”
Iris Murdoch (Under the Net)
“
In April 2004, Google had one of its countless minicrises, over an anti-Semitic website called Jew Watch. When someone typed “Jew” into Google’s search box, the first result was often a link to that hate site. Critics urged Google to exclude it in its search results. Brin publicly grappled with the dilemma. His view on what Google should do—maintain the sanctity of search—was rational, but a tremor in his voice betrayed how much he was troubled that his search engine was sending people to a cesspool of bigotry. “My reaction was to be really upset about it,” he admitted at the time. “It was certainly not something I want to see.” Then he launched into an analysis of why Google’s algorithms yielded that result, mainly because the signals triggered by the keyword “Jew” reflected the frequent use of that abbreviation as a pejorative. The algorithms had spoken, and Brin’s ideals, no matter how heartfelt, could not justify intervention. “I feel like I shouldn’t impose my beliefs on the world,” he said. “It’s a bad technology practice.
”
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Steven Levy (In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives)
“
An old story is told about Rabia of Basra, an eighth-century Sufi mystic who was seen running through the streets of her city one day carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she said she wanted to burn down the rewards of paradise with the torch and put out the fires of hell with the water, because both blocked the way to God, 'O, Allah,' Rabia prayed, 'if I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.'
In Christian tradition this comes under the heading of unconditional love, though it is usually understood as the kind of love God exercises toward humans instead of the other way around. Now, thanks to a Muslim mystic from Iraq, I have a new way of understanding what it means to love God unconditionally. Whenever I am tempted to act from fear of divine punishment or hope of divine reward, Rabia leans over from here religion into mine and empties a bucket of water on my head.
”
”
Barbara Brown Taylor (Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others)
“
The Proofs Human society has devised a system of proofs or tests that people must pass before they can participate in many aspects of commercial exchange and social interaction. Until they can prove that they are who they say they are, and until that identity is tied to a record of on-time payments, property ownership, and other forms of trustworthy behavior, they are often excluded—from getting bank accounts, from accessing credit, from being able to vote, from anything other than prepaid telephone or electricity. It’s why one of the biggest opportunities for this technology to address the problem of global financial inclusion is that it might help people come up with these proofs. In a nutshell, the goal can be defined as proving who I am, what I do, and what I own. Companies and institutions habitually ask questions—about identity, about reputation, and about assets—before engaging with someone as an employee or business partner. A business that’s unable to develop a reliable picture of a person’s identity, reputation, and assets faces uncertainty. Would you hire or loan money to a person about whom you knew nothing? It is riskier to deal with such people, which in turn means they must pay marked-up prices to access all sorts of financial services. They pay higher rates on a loan or are forced by a pawnshop to accept a steep discount on their pawned belongings in return for credit. Unable to get bank accounts or credit cards, they cash checks at a steep discount from the face value, pay high fees on money orders, and pay cash for everything while the rest of us enjoy twenty-five days interest free on our credit cards. It’s expensive to be poor, which means it’s a self-perpetuating state of being. Sometimes the service providers’ caution is dictated by regulation or compliance rules more than the unwillingness of the banker or trader to enter a deal—in the United States and other developed countries, banks are required to hold more capital against loans deemed to be of poor quality, for example. But many other times the driving factor is just fear of the unknown. Either way, anything that adds transparency to the multi-faceted picture of people’s lives should help institutions lower the cost of financing and insuring them.
”
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Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
“
Immigrants are almost always outsiders. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to margins the people who trigger in us the feelings we try to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and poor and sick people on the margins of the society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we are most afraid we will find in ourselves. ....And we are often not honest about what's happening. If we are in the inside and we see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves: " I'm not in that situation because I'm different. But that's just prime talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don't want to confess what we have in common with the outsiders because it is too humbling. It suggests that success and failure aren't entirely fair. And if you know, you got the better deal, then you have to be humble and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say :" I am no better than others."
So instead, we invent ways for our need to exclude. We say it is about merit or tradition when it's just protecting our privilege and our pride.
”
”
Melinda Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
“
Caroline Myss
I need you to be fully present and appreciate all that is in your life right now. No matter where it is. You are in the depths of despair, and still I need to say to you, you had your life focused on something that didn’t belong to you and a path that didn’t belong to you. Yes, you did, or you wouldn’t be here. You locked in on something that did not belong to you. Someone that didn’t belong to you. You didn’t let go of a yesterday that didn’t belong to you. You hung on to a rage that did belong to you and you wouldn’t let it go. You lost track of being here, and that is true, or this is what you did.
One of those things happened, and you said, “It shouldn’t have happened to me.” I promise you that happened. When someone finally said, “It’s not my life. I don’t know how I lost my purpose.” No, you didn’t. You did not lose your purpose. What you lost was the sense that you thought certain things shouldn’t happen to you and they did. As if you were excluded from the ordinary everyday things of life and you can’t get over it. People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt. “Please, God, make me anything, but not ordinary.” And because they do that, they feel like they should be protected from ordinary things. So when something happens like an illness, poverty, any kind of catastrophe, they think, I can’t believe this happened to me.
”
”
Oprah Winfrey (The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations)
“
Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins. And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different.” But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.
”
”
Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
“
So you don’t trust me: the guy who taught you everything you know. I’m guessing if you have her”—he jerked his thumb at Rae—“that’s no accident. Luke’s buddies sent her to trap you, and she thought she was doing the right thing, because, duh, she’s already proven she’s kinda gullible that way.”
“Hey!” Rae said.
“You are. Own it. Fix it. Now, you guys have her, which means you escaped whoever sent her after you. You didn’t escape without a fight, given that bruise I see rising on Daniel’s jaw and the scrapes on Derek’s knuckles. But you escaped, and you came back here, and you captured me. Who taught you all that?”
“Daniel and I had already started learning,” Maya said, “during those weeks you were chasing us.”
“Trial by fire,” he said. “Followed by hardcore, hands-on tactical training. You got away scot-free from these guys because of my lessons. And yet now you don’t trust I’m on your side?”
“Nope,” Derek said.
“Sorry,” Daniel said.
Maya crossed her arms and shook her head. I shrugged.
Moreno broke into a grin. “You guys do me proud. I’d give you all a hug, if that wasn’t a little creepy. And if I was the hugging sort. But if you survive the rest of this, I’ll take you all out for beer and ice cream.”
“You don’t need to be sarcastic,” Rae muttered.
“Oh, but I’m not, and they know it. This is exactly what I trained them for. Trust no one except one another. Excluding you, kid, because I don’t know you, and you have a bad habit of screwing up. But these guys are doing the right thing. Next step?”
Turn the tables,” I said. “Capture someone who’s behind this and get them to talk.”
“Mmm, yes. That would work. But even better?”
“Stop them,” Derek said. “Don’t just take down one. Take them all down.”
“Without running to the Nasts for help,” Daniel said. “Because in another year, some of us will be off to college, and we need to be able to look after ourselves.”
“Starting with proving we can look after ourselves,” Maya said.
Moreno beamed. “You guys are ace. See, this is what I told Sean. The best time to train operatives is when they’re still young and malleable. None of that shit about waiting until they’re eighteen and legally old enough to consent.”
Maya shook her head. “I suppose you’d also suggest he have the Cabal terrorize them for weeks first, so they’re properly motivated.”
“Exactly. Personal rights and freedoms are vastly overrated. And there’s nothing wrong with a little PTSD. I’ve always found mine useful. Keeps me on my toes.”
Rae stared at him.
“I’m kidding,” he said to her. “Mostly. Don’t you joke around like this with your instructors? Oh, wait. You don’t have any. Which is why you got tricked—again. And got captured by these guys.”
“Can we tie him up now?” Rae said. “And gag him?”
“Doesn’t do any good,” Derek said.
“We could try.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (Atoning (Darkness Rising #3.1))
“
Peter announced: “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12 NLT). Many recoil at such definitiveness. John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 sound primitive in this era of broadbands and broad minds. The world is shrinking, cultures are blending, borders are bending; this is the day of inclusion. All roads lead to heaven, right? But can they? The sentence makes good talk-show fodder, but is it accurate? Can all approaches to God be correct? Islam says Jesus was not crucified. Christians say he was. Both can’t be right. Judaism refuses the claim of Christ as the Messiah.6 Christians accept it. Someone’s making a mistake. Buddhists look toward Nirvana, achieved after no less than 547 reincarnations.7 Christians believe in one life, one death, and an eternity of enjoying God. Doesn’t one view exclude the other? Humanists do not acknowledge a creator of life. Jesus claims to be the source of life. One of the two speaks folly. Spiritists read your palms. Christians consult the Bible. Hindus perceive a plural and impersonal God.8 Christ-followers believe “there is only one God” (1 Cor. 8:4 NLT). Somebody is wrong. And, most supremely, every non-Christian religion says, “You can save you.” Jesus says, “My death on the cross saves you.” How can all religions lead to God when they are so different? We don’t tolerate such illogic in other matters. We don’t pretend that all roads lead to London or all ships sail to Australia.
”
”
Max Lucado (3:16: The Numbers of Hope)
“
I want to say something here, a lot of times, each of us may have been guilty of labeling someone materialistic because they have a high standard or expectation from those they want to relate with or deal with. In our minds, we are pissed off. How can they elevate the standards so high, so high that we are excluded, it must be selfish of them and in fact wicked. They are saying that we are not fit to be their friends, etc, etc. We spend so much energy trying to analyse and sometimes even dare to dictate to others what standards they should keep and maintain so we can fit in, I think with respect, it is a flawed way of thinking about the situation. It is a manner of thinking about the situation that may never solve of problems, our inadequacy.
The government may set standards and regulations about how we ought t conduct our affairs in the public, but it will hardly, rarely and barely concern itself with the regulation of personal and private life, except those private actions that have or bring about public consequences. As such, each one of us has the power to make Rules and Regulations for the Admission of Persons into our lives, it is not in your capacity to cry when someone chooses to set his as high as the Eiffel tower
Finally, instead of dying of envy, jealousy or resulting in character assassination, what you may do is spend time climbing the ladder of life, that you may become relevant to those you wish to dine and wine with. This is the hard part and most of us will rather squirm and cry-fowl. The rules of the game was set by nature, quitting, is a choice too.
”
”
Magnus Nwagu Amudi
“
Live to start. Start to live.
Don’t Wait. Start Stuff.
People are innately passionate about certain unique aspects of life. You are innately passionate about certain unique aspects of life. And people are blessed with bouts of clear and concise intuition that drive them toward distinct goals and aspirations within their jobs and their lives as a whole.(You are not excluded from this group.)
But people disregard these inspired thoughts, these high-potential opportunities, as “just another stupid idea.”
Why?
Perhaps they are concerned about a lack of support (perceived or otherwise) from others, or maybe they are afraid of what others will think of them if they fail. Whatever the reason, they convince themselves:
“This would be a great idea for someone who has more free time.”
“This would be a great idea for someone with a higher level of education.”
“This would be a great idea for someone who has more money.”
“Everybody thinks this idea is crazy. They must be right.”
No matter the justification, the response is the same. These inspired thoughts, these high-potential ideas, are stuffed deep into the drawer labeled “stupid,” and they’re never heard from again . . . or the waiting game begins.
People wait.
They wait for that elusive day when they’ll finally have enough time (guess what? — you never will), enough education (there is always more to know), enough money (no matter how much you make, someone will always have more). They wait until the children are grown (news flash: just because they’re grown, it doesn’t mean you’re rid of them) or until things settle down at work (they never will).
People wait until . . . until . . . until . . . They wait, and they wait, and they wait, until that fateful day when they wake up and realize that while they were sitting around, paying dues, earning their keep, waiting for that elusive “perfect time,” their entire life has passed them by.
”
”
Richie Norton (The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret)
“
But perhaps one should reverse the problem and ask oneself what is served by the failure of the prison; what is the use of these different phenomena that are continually being criticized; the maintenance of delinquency, the encouragement of recidivism, the transformation of the occasional offender into a habitual delinquent, the organization of a closed milieu of delinquency. Perhaps one should look for what is hidden beneath the apparent cynicism of the penal institution, which, after purging the convicts by means of their sentence, continues to follow them by a whole series of ‘brandings’ (a surveillance that was once de jure and which is today de facto; the police record that has taken the place of the convict’s passport) and which thus pursues as a ‘delinquent’ someone who has acquitted himself of his punishment as an offender? Can we not see here a consequence rather than a contradiction? If so, one would be forced to suppose that the prison, and no doubt punishment in general, is not intended to eliminate offences, but rather to distinguish them, to distribute them, to use them; that it is not so much that they render docile those who are liable to transgress the law, but that they tend to assimilate the transgression of the laws in a general tactics of subjection. Penality would then appear to be a way of handling illegalities, of laying down the limits of tolerance, of giving free rein to some, of putting pressure on others, of excluding a particular section, of making another useful, of neutralizing certain individuals and of profiting from others. In short, penality does not simply ‘check’ illegalities; it ‘differentiates’ them, it provides them with a general ‘economy’. And, if one can speak of justice, it is not only because the law itself or the way of applying it serves the interests of a class, it is also because the differential administration of illegalities through the mediation of penality forms part of those mechanisms of domination. Legal punishments are to be resituated in an overall strategy of illegalities. The ‘failure’ of the prison may be understood on this basis.
”
”
Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison)
“
After showing that truth about God was known by the Gentiles [Rom 1:18], he now states that they were guilty of the sins of ungodliness. First, he shows this with regard to the sin of impiety; secondly, in regard to injustice.... But someone might believe that they would be excludes from the sin of ungodliness on account of ignorance, as the Apostle says of himself in 1 Tim (1:13): 'I received mercy, because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.' First, therefore, he shows that they are without excuse [Rom 1:20]; secondly, he states their sin, there [v.23;] at And they changed the glory. In regard to the first it should be noted that ignorance excuses from guilt, when it precedes and causes guilt in such a way that the ignorance itself is not the result of guilt; for example, when a person, after exercising due caution, thinks he is striking a foe, when he is really striking his father. But if the ignorance is caused by guilt, it cannot excuse one from a fault that follows. Thus, if a person commits murder, because he is drunk, he is not excused from the guilt, because he sinned by intoxicating himself; indeed, according to the Philosopher, he deserves a double penalty. First, therefore, he states his intention, saying: So, i.e., things about god are so well known to them, that they are without excuse, i.e., they cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance: 'Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (Jas 4:17); 'Therefore, you have no excuse' (Rom 2:1). 126. Secondly, he proves his statement at For, although they knew (v. 21). First, he shows that their first guilt did not proceed from ignorance; secondly, their ignorance proceeded from this guilt, but became vain. That their basic guilt was not due to ignorance is shown by the fact that, although they possessed knowledge of God, they failed to use it unto good. For they knew God in two ways: first, as the supereminent being, to Whom glory and honor were due. They are said to be without excuse, therefore, because, although they knew god, they did not honor him as God; either because they failed to pay Him due worship or because they put a limit to His power and knowledge by denying certain aspects of His power and knowledge..: 'when you exalt him, put forth all your strength.' Secondly, they knew Him as the cause of all good things. Hence, in all things he was deserving of thanks, which they did not render; rather, they attributed their blessings to their own talent and power. Hence, he adds: nor did they give thanks, namely, to the Lord: 'Give thanks to Him in all circumstances' (1 Th 5:18).
”
”
Thomas Aquinas
“
It may be cheap, but it should also be sturdy. What must be avoided at all costs is dishonest, distorted and ornate work. What must be sought is the natural, direct, simple, sturdy and safe.
Confining beauty to visual appreciation and excluding the beauty of practical objects has proven to be a grave error on the part of modern man. A true appreciation of beauty cannot be fostered by ignoring practical handicrafts. After all, there is no greater opportunity for appreciating beauty than through its use in our daily lives, no greater opportunity for coming into direct contact with the beautiful. It was the tea masters who first recognized this fact. Their profound aesthetic insight came as a result of their experience with utilitarian objects.
If life and beauty are treated as belonging to different realms, our aesthetic sensibilities will gradually wither and decline.
It is said that someone living in proximity to a flowering garden grows insensitive to its fragrance. Likewise, when one becomes too familiar with a sight, one loses the ability to truly see it. Habit robs us of the power to perceive anew, much less the power to be moved. Thus it has taken us all these years, all these ages, to detect the beauty in common objects.
The world of utility and the world of beauty are not separate realms.
Users and the used have exchanged a vow: the more an object is used the more beautiful it will become and the more the user uses an object, the more the object will be used.
When machines are in control, the beauty they produce is cold and shallow. It is the human hand that creates subtlety and warmth.
Weakness cannot withstand the rigors of daily use.
The true meaning of the tea ceremony is being forgotten. The beauty of the way of tea should be the beauty of the ordinary, the beauty of honest poverty.
Equating the expensive with the beautiful cannot be a point of pride.
Under the snow's reflected light creeping into the houses, beneath the dim lamplight, various types of manual work are taken up. This is how time is forgotten; this is how work absorbs the hours and days. yet there is work to do, work to be done with the hands. Once this work begins, the clock no longer measures the passage of time.
The history of kogin is the history of utility being transformed into beauty.
Through their own efforts, these people made their daily lives more beautiful. This is the true calling, the mission, of handicrafts. We are drawn by that beauty and we have much to learn from it.
As rich as it is, America is perhaps unrivalled for its vulgar lack of propriety and decorum, which may account for its having the world's highest crime rate.
The art of empty space seen in the Nanga school of monochrome painting and the abstract, free-flowing art of calligraphy have already begun to exert considerable influence on the West.
Asian art represents a latent treasure trove of immense and wide-reaching value for the future and that is precisely because it presents a sharp contrast to Western art.
No other country has pursued the art of imperfection as eagerly as Japan.
Just as Western art and architecture owe much to the sponsorship of the House of Medici during the Reformation, tea and Noh owe much to the protection of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa ( 1436-1490 ).
The most brilliant era of Japanese culture, the Higashiyama period ( 1443-1490 ).
Literally, sabi commonly means "loneliness" but as a Buddhist term it originally referred to the cessation of attachment.
The beauty of tea is the beauty of sabi. It might also be called the beauty of poverty or in our day it might be simply be called the beauty of simplicity. The tea masters familiar with this beauty were called sukisha-ki meaning "lacking". The sukisha were masters of enjoying what was lacking.
”
”
Soetsu Yanagi (The Beauty of Everyday Things)
“
Every state admitted to the Union since 1819, starting with Maine, embedded in their constitutions discrimination against blacks, especially the denial of the right to vote. In addition, only Massachusetts did not exclude African Americans from juries; and many states, from California to Ohio, prohibited blacks from testifying in court against someone who was white.
”
”
Carol Anderson (White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide)
“
As life advances and we have to give up the hopes, dreams and desires of our youth, we acquire a growing sense of being a victim of the world and of other people. There is always someone else to blame for our misfortunes or failures, someone we wish to exclude.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2))
“
We need to be careful that we don’t exclude anyone’s grief. We all deserve to be heard in our grief, no matter what that grief may be. At the same time, we can’t assign equal weight to all losses and successfully support someone in pain. Making no distinction between levels of grief does not support the griever.
”
”
Megan Devine (It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand)
“
When you accept who you are and what you want, you’re less likely to be triggered by someone else’s opinion of you or perception of your ideas. When we broaden our scope of love, we’re not excluding people for what they do or how they act (unless they are abusive). We love them because we want to be loving people. If you like a clean house, you keep it clean whether you have guests or not—it makes it a more pleasant place for you to live. The same is true when you create a loving environment in your heart. You do it for yourself, no matter who receives or returns it. You don’t mess your house up if someone messy comes in. You don’t fill your heart with hate because someone hateful enters your radius. You want to live in a house of love.
”
”
Jay Shetty (8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go)
“
Someone has to talk openly about a school system where one in four pupils ends up excluded. Pupils who end up without a diploma because special-education private schools that make millions in profit ‘failed’ to hire any teachers. The world’s most profitable failure.
”
”
Malena Ernman (Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis)
“
one central belief in postmodern political thought is that powerful forces in society essentially order society into categories and hierarchies that are organized to serve their own interests. They effect this by dictating how society and its features can be spoken about and what can be accepted as true. For example, a demand that someone provide evidence and reasoning for their claims will be seen through a postmodernist Theoretical lens as a request to participate within a system of discourses and knowledge production that was built by powerful people who valued these approaches and designed them to exclude alternative means of communicating and producing “knowledge.” In other words, Theory views science as having been organized in a way that serves the interests of the powerful people who established it—white Western men—while setting up barriers against the participation of others. Thus, the cynicism at the heart of Theory is evident.
”
”
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
“
Another ambiguity in debates over work and welfare concerns time. Any duty to work must include a time dimension. Advocates of the new work regime often seem to assume that “workers” should always be working—occupying a full-time job (forty or more hours a week), forty-eight to fifty weeks a year (excluding leaves for illness, injury, or maternity), every year of their adult lives (excluding periods of full-time education), until retirement age. But why are these the only kind of “workers” who have fulfilled their moral or civic duties with respect to work? Arguably, we should consider someone a worker in good moral or civic standing even if he or she takes periods off from work—say, to do care work (if this is not considered “work”), to augment or develop new skills, to participate in activities that, though not considered “work,” promote social welfare, or to just take a break to do something more personally satisfying. Setting aside the details, the point is that even in a society that regards work as a duty, there can be a variety of work regimes and we should consider whether a less onerous regime, with more opportunity for leisure, would be both desirable and feasible.
”
”
Tommie Shelby (Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform)
“
Note: I am sure that now they will approach Medium to stop me from writing. Let’s see what happens.
“A genuine person or celebrity doesn’t need a certificate or blue tick. Such ways are blackmailing your passion, emotion, or willingness. Criminals and money-mongers misuse and try to earn in an ugly and easy way. This trend also discriminates against others who cannot afford such an awkward notion.”
Istay determined every day. I cannot tolerate liars and those who misuse their authority and attempt to victimize the righteous for their will and purpose in an illegitimate way to please their godfathers of the mafia and international criminal intelligence agencies.
I am pretty sure, after reviewing again the replies from the Twitter team that mirror and endorse the Twitter team, that someone works for intelligence agencies or criminal and mafia groups. Since the beginning months of this year, I have been continuously victimized without specifying why I was posting the wrong things.
I am going to publish a few emails that will exhibit the picture of how I was being victimized, harassed, and even threatened about things that I was neither aware of nor that the team explained.
I was already under the attacks of criminals and even the gang of filthy-minded gays who were suffering from mental issues and sexual frustration; knowing it, I am not gay. In the Twitter team, the presence of such ones is not excluded since I felt a similar style of victimization. How do they dare to adopt such mean tactics to gain their will and desire?
This reply email shows that a screenshot article has been displayed since 2020. After four years, it became an issue for someone in the Twitter team who continued to lock my account and tag the restriction flag.
Text of my emails;
“I am still uncertain about what to post and what not to post. You didn’t specify why my account was locked, whether it was because of the content I removed or something else. Is it permissible for me to share media and social media links in which my quotes are mentioned? My writings do not contain any personal attacks; nonetheless, thank you.”
“You locked my Twitter, @EhsanSehgal, again; you know why you are doing it. Now, I can say only goodbye to my locked account and enjoy your terror. It is not a protection of my account; it is victimization. No more requests to unlock my account. Someone of angelic character will do it without my request. Shame on you all, involved ones.”
Team replied;
Hello,
“We had a look at your account, and it appears that everything is now resolved!
If that’s not the case, please reply to this message, and we’ll continue to help.
Thanks,”
X Support
This was a screenshot article from Wikipedia about me on my profile that was illegitimately removed by such people as the Twitter team forced me to remove. Despite that, they continued locking my account to identify and provide an ID or passport. I did that twice and identified several times, but the team seemed not satisfied since their goal was something else; they would not approach nor be able to do it.
To stop such criminal torture, I deactivated my account and decided never to come back there again.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
But then, on a brisk February evening my junior year, I attended a free yoga class at the Harvard Divinity School Andover Chapel. I came in fully expecting to do cat, cow, and child’s pose. Our instructor, Nicholas, who was also a graduate student there, had us on our backs with taut abs, legs held in the air in a ninety-degree position, neck lifted off the ground, hands stretched above our heads. I had become the sleeping dragon. One minute in, my body was trembling. You can’t. I told myself I could. You can’t. I opened my eyes and saw everyone else peacefully holding their pose. This voice yelling at me wasn’t my own. So where was it coming from? You can’t. It was Hang telling me to dump my elementary school best friends who still played with toy horses at thirteen. He said I needed to be more strategic about my social ranking. You can’t be friends with them. My sister excluding me from her life when we became teenagers. You can’t hang out with us. Ba calling me pathetic when I told him I wasn’t pursuing med school. You can’t even try because you’re too dumb. I screamed, You can’t, right back inside of my head, telling all of them what I never had the courage to say. My body shuddered as the rage escaped my body like bats flying out from a cave. Hot tears fell from the sides of my eyes into the chapel carpet floor. And then I heard a clear voice inside of me speak. It was not mine, it was someone else’s. “All those times you’ve felt unloved or alone, you weren’t. God, through the presence of the body, has always been there for you.” Who was this voice? And how could my body be the key to loving myself? My body was always something I had seen as an inconvenience, a detached thing I had to fix. But tonight, I felt welcome to get to know my body.
”
”
Susan Lieu (The Manicurist's Daughter)
“
Note: The first incident happened after the arrest by the Netherlands police in May 1980. I suffered from that, which destroyed my career, future, health, and life. I tried and tried to investigate that, but the police didn't even register the first information report (FIR). It stayed, refusing since 1980 until now, which creates suspicious questions about what the reasons are for not filing the case. It mirrors whether the Netherlands government victimised me or whether the hired ones of the international intelligence agencies have been a hindrance or the criminal groups. - The second incident happened in the shape of uncurable cancer; it was a deliberate mistake and ignorance of the Netherlands Urologists, who did not follow even the primary medical borderlines for the checkup during one year from 2016 to 2017. After the diagnosis, they are hiding the reality, and they still do not take it seriously. I still hope that the Netherlands' neutral and free media will awaken to help me investigate the incident. It will save millions of lives around the world. In God's name, take it seriously to protect me and others. I feel suspicious elements around me. I cry and pray day and night for God's protection since I do not exclude the Qadeyanis witches and magicians, who keep doing black magic continuously that the West does not understand.
My Real Story In A Poem
***
I never thought
I would suffer from cancer
The metastatic prostate gland
I still cannot decide that
It is natural or human-made
Since everything is possible
In the medical-criminal world
How it happened in Western society;
Civilized urologists ignored it deliberately
From 2016 to 2017
Telling that nothing was wrong
Whereas I was suffering from
Bleeding, burning, and pain
During urinating
I begged urologists for a wide-scale checkup
With MRI scans and other new technologies
But urologists stayed rejecting;
Whereas I was paying insurance for that
Consequently, at the beginning of 2017
The diagnosis became a time bomb that
I had metastatic prostate gland cancer,
Which was not curable,
They listed me on the death list,
Treating for longer life expectancy
However, they do tell not the truth
And stay suspicious
It confuses me and creates grave fear
Since then
I am bearing terrible side effects
Factually, I became victimized twice
By criminals, Intelligence Agencies
And underground-mafias
Which I am unable to trace alone
In this regard, I approached Western Media,
Ministries, police, courts, Euro Union
Unfortunately, none of those responded
Even my motherland media cruelly ignored
It seems as if I am in the grip of the demon
And The Prisoner Of The Hague
Everyone has left me alone in pain,
Stress, fear, depression
Even my children don't care
And realize my tears
Where resides sympathy, empathy,
And humanity?
I feel death before death
It is a silent cruelty
Ah, where should I ask and beg
For justice, help, and investigation
That civilized world should know
An innocent is under victimization
I believe God will help and protect
And someone from somewhere
Appear to hold my hands
To eliminate all criminals and demons
My cancer will be curable
With a longer life expectancy, in some ways
Amen, O' merciful God amen.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
For once the people had grown accustomed to eating off others’ tables and expected their daily needs to be met, then, when they found someone to champion their cause—a man of vision and daring, who had been excluded from political office by his poverty—they institute government by force; they banded together and set about murdering, banishing, and redistributing land, until they were reduced to a bestial state and once more gained a monarchic master.[
”
”
Neema Parvini (The Prophets of Doom)
“
We’ll get to the adult by having recourse to his frustration. As life advances and we have to give up the hopes, dreams, and desires of our youth, we acquire a growing sense of being a victim of the world and of other people. There is always someone else to blame for our misfortunes or failures, someone we wish to exclude. Embracing a doctrine that will turn this grudge and this victim mentality into something positive provides comfort and strength.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2))
“
When we pray we admit that we don’t know what God is going to do, but remember that we will never find out if we are not open to risks. We learn to stretch out our arms to the deep sea and the high heavens with an open mind and heart. In many ways prayer becomes an attitude toward life that opens itself up to a gift that is always coming. We find courage to let new things happen, things over which we have no control, but which now loom as less threatening. And it is here that we find courage to face our human boundaries and hurts, whether our physical appearance, our being excluded by others, our memories of hurt or abuse, our oppression at the hands of another. As we find freedom to cry out in our anguish or protest someone’s suffering, we discover ourselves slowly led into a new place. We become conditioned to wait for what we in our own strength cannot create or orchestrate. We realize that joy is not a matter of balloons and parties, not owning a house, or even having our children succeed in school. It has to do with a deep experience— an experience of Christ. In the quiet listening of prayer, we learn to make out the voice that says, “I love you, whoever else likes you or not. You are mine. Build your home in me as I have built my home in you.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen (Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times)
“
God is not ashamed of human lowliness but goes right into the middle of it, chooses someone as instrument, and performs the miracles right there where they are least expected. God draws near to the lowly, loving the lost, the unnoticed, the unremarkable, the excluded, the powerless, and the broken. What people say is lost, God says is found; what people say is “condemned,” God says is “saved.” Where people say No! God says Yes! Where people turn their eyes away in indifference or arrogance, God gazes with a love that glows warmer there than anywhere else. Where people say something is despicable, God calls it blessed.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
“
Contemplation waits for the moments, creates the moments, where all can be a silent prayer. It refuses the very distinction between action and stillness. Contemplation is essentially nondual consciousness that overcomes the gaps between me and God, outer and inner, either and or, me and you [...] We are led forward by brightness, a “larger force field” that includes the negative, the problematic, the difficult, the unknown—that which we do not yet understand, the Mysteriousness that God always Is. Brightness does not exclude or deny anything.
We cannot grow in the great art form, the integrative dance of action and contemplation, without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness to not know—and not even need to know. This is how we allow and encounter Mystery.
Of course, we can only do this if Someone Else is holding us [...] If we can allow that Someone Else to embrace us [...] [i]t will be “no longer you” who acts or contemplates but the Life of One who lives in you now acting for you and with you and as you (see Galatians 2:20)!
”
”
Richard Rohr
“
Suppression Techniques
1. Making invisible: Silencing or otherwise marginalizing people in opposition by ignoring them.
2. Ridicule: Portraying the arguments of an opponent, or the opponents themselves, in a ridiculing fashion.
3. Withholding information: Excluding a person from the decision making process, or knowingly not forwarding information so as to make the person less able to make an informed choice.
4. Double bind: Punishing or otherwise belittling the actions of an opponent, regardless of how they act.
5. Heaping blame/putting to shame: Embarrassing someone or insinuating that they themselves are to blame for their position.
”
”
Berit As
“
Many leaders confuse self-selection (no invitation necessary) with “everyone belongs.” If someone in the history of the world can or will be excluded from your community, then there’s some difference between potential insiders and all outsiders. No matter how small the difference or how wide the welcome, the distinction (shared value) is important to identify so that future members can recognize it and understand that they belong inside. If you think of very strong communities, the kind that stand together even when facing death, the kind that spend their last resources to rescue a member in trouble or to travel great distances to support someone in need, whether monasteries, militaries, or families, these communities have a clear boundary where they know who’s in and who’s not.
”
”
Charles H. Vogl (The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging)
“
If you measure someone’s brain and see very little activity during a task, it does not necessarily indicate that they’re not trying—it more likely signifies that they have worked hard in the past to burn the programs into the circuitry. Consciousness is called in during the first phase of learning and is excluded from the game playing after it is deep in the system.
”
”
David Eagleman (Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain)
“
There are three rules that exclude anyone from the grace of God: The unwillingness to love someone that has chosen a different path, religious or not; The lack of capacity to bridge material needs with spiritual purposes; And the idea that one owns the non-written book of God.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
Extend Invitations
"How many times have you sat at home alone feeling jealous or sad that you were not invited to a party or out to dinner? You may have seen people having fun on Facebook and wondered what it would take to be included next time. And when you don’t feel included, it can leave you feeling rejected, dismissed, lonely and excluded. It does not have to be this way. Why do we wait for others to do the inviting? You can change your social life instantly by taking the initiative to reach out and connect with someone.
”
”
Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
“
No one talked to me and everyone excluded me, including my mother-figure. Revli Tribe is supposed to be the tribe of love. But I guess… everyone thought someone was already loving me.
”
”
K. Weikel (Tamir (The One-Hundred, #3))
“
There is a taboo in the psychology world, to ask a therapist what their cure rate is. Though the therapist knows what the person means in asking, and could give an answer, they typically dislike the question, because it is a way of measuring the psychologist on something that depends ultimately on their patients. To add to that the therapist doesn’t typically see a struggle in their patient’s life not being a struggle, but that a person gets better at not letting it get to them. I would say that our experience in life will always be in reference to our weaknesses, but that isn’t a bad thing. Our weaknesses plague us until we decide to really face them, and then they become strengths as we change them. I think it is a matter of maturing, and not curing in psychopathology, we’re naïve not broken.
Alcoholism for instance, once it is overcome, the person doesn’t forget all the intricacies of the cost-benefit of alcohol once they become sober. They still know exactly what problems alcohol seemed to solve, and when faced with those problems, they cannot completely exclude it as a possible remedy. Why? For example, I personally don’t drink alcohol, but I know many people who see it as a normal part of their life, and have set what they feel are appropriate bounds for its use. It is a lot easier for me, who has not experienced any benefits, but knows several disadvantages, to not see alcohol as worth it. However, similarly in my life, fully knowing both the advantages of things like soda, fast food, sleeping in, not exercising and whatever else, in the cost benefit analysis, they sometimes still win.
Every asset has associated risks, and when making a decision, while trying to optimize value, we are not picking between correct or incorrect, or right or wrong, but cost vs benefit in safe bet vs the risky bet.
Whether I can study or write better while drinking a caffeinated soda has yielded inconsistent results, but sometimes the gamble seems worth it, however drinking a soda before going to the gym has yielded consistently negative results. This is the process of maturity, and the only way to help someone mature faster, is to help them remember and process the data they have already gathered or are currently gathering. One thing that slows down this process is false information. Many cases of grave disability due to psychopathology are caused because of the burden of an overwhelming amount of counterproductive information, and limited resources of productive information.
”
”
Michael Brent Jones (Conflict and Connection: Anatomy of Mind and Emotion)
“
A category is defined by what is not included in it. And whats outside a given category, is in turn, part of a larger, more comprehensive category that exists outside of that. When someone is standing in front of me, I see a different aspect of that person depending on where I am standing. This holds true only when the other person and I are at the same level. If you are in an airplane in the sky and you look down at a person on the ground, that person looks like the same speck, no matter what angle you see him from. That's because he belongs now to a different category or level. Do you know why people are obsessed with categories? It's because they're afraid of what lies outside their own category. They're afraid of the fact that they are a mere speck. That's also why they simply consider everything outside their own category as alien and exclude it. Just as Procrustes did when he cut people to size in order to make them fit his bed. It is fear that drives Jack to chop down his own beanstalk, isn't it? And of course his fear ends up making him unable to climb up to the world beyond the clouds, ever again. Poor fellow! When people lock themselves into the category they call 'romance novels,' they end up reading Dostoyevsky as romance. Keep this in mind. The alien doesn't exist outside you, it's inside you.
”
”
Kim Gyeong-uk (God Has No Grandchildren (Library of Korean Literature))
“
came to understand for the first time ever the importance of being healthy, and I don’t mean the universalizing and troubling concept of “diet conscious” our culture currently prefers, but the kind of healthy that encourages and cultivates a knowledge and awareness of your unique body and what it can be reasonably asked to do, and to never feel shame if your body does not operate by the same rules as someone else’s body. I’m talking about a healthy that is rooted in self-determination and individual autonomy, and is thus applicable to a spectrum of bodies, including professional athletes, cancer survivors, gym rats, the doctor-phobic, the poor, joggers, and folks with a limited supply of spoons, a healthy that excludes no one and that is specific and relative to the individual.
”
”
Lesley Kinzel (Two Whole Cakes: How to Stop Dieting and Learn to Love Your Body)
“
Scientists were believed to be free of conflicts if their only source of funding was a federal agency, but all nutritionists knew that if their research failed to support the government position on a particular subject, the funding would go instead to someone whose research did. “To be a dissenter was to be unfunded because the peer-review system rewards conformity and excludes criticism,” George Mann had written in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1977.
”
”
Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease)
“
The world of advertising, whose list of sins runs deep, has sinned most by branding these people as creatives, which the world of web design sadly adopted as its own. Calling someone a creative doesn’t elevate. It marginalizes. The label excludes designers from conversations about strategy, product definition, business goals, and metrics. It sets them apart from other employees as people who aren’t bound by the same expectations and requirements. It diminishes their opportunity to be seen as people capable of analytical, rigorous thought.
”
”
Anonymous
“
The building, it so happened, was a music college of the kind she herself had left two years before, abandoning her lifelong hopes of becoming a professional musician; she recognised the piece as the D minor fugue from Bach's *French Suites*, a piece she had always loved and that caused her, hearing it so unexpectedly, to feel there on the pavement the most extraordinary sense of loss. It was as though the music had once belonged to her and now no longer did; as though she had been excluded from its beauty, was being forced to see it in the possession of someone else, and to revisit in its entirety her own sadness at her inability, for a number of reasons, to remain in that world.
”
”
Rachel Cusk (Outline)
“
It is important to recognize what this kind of response does in this debate on the role of women in the church. It effectively prevents 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1 from speaking to this question. If someone says, “I’m not going to base my decision on these verses because nobody can figure out what they mean anyway,” then he has essentially said that those passages cannot play a role in his decision about this question. And that means that the passages that most directly speak to the question of women teaching and governing in the church are silenced and excluded from discussion on that very question. In essence, this approach guarantees that a decision about women teaching and governing in the church will be made without reference to the passages in the Bible that speak most directly to the topic. It is hard to think of an approach more likely to lead to a wrong decision.
”
”
Wayne Grudem (Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?)
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I have most of my patients with Hashimoto’s follow an elimination diet initially in the form of the AIP diet. I have them do this for the first month, and if they are doing well, I’ll encourage them to follow this diet for a longer period. Eventually, I’ll have them reintroduce some of the excluded foods, as the goal isn’t to keep them on this diet permanently. However, at times, I will order an IgG food sensitivity panel. If someone insists on ordering this type of testing, then I’m fine ordering it. Another situation when I might order such testing is if the patient started out with an elimination diet and followed my other recommendations, but a few months later they still aren’t progressing. Another scenario where I might order a food sensitivity panel is if the patient is progressing but then they hit a roadblock and don’t show further improvement.
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Eric Osansky (Hashimoto's Triggers: Eliminate Your Thyroid Symptoms By Finding And Removing Your Specific Autoimmune Triggers)
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present company excluded—and if someone could only find a way to apply enough suction, maybe Parliament would finally get its heid pulled out of its arse and do something sensible for once. These aren’t solutions to the emptiness. They are merely harnesses, safety lines tethering you to the cliff face as your bollocks dangle over the abyss. Absolutely vital to survival, but never a replacement for the great lost love of your life. I lost my wife to an auto accident when we were fifty. I’ve been dangling ever since.
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Kevin Hearne (Ink & Sigil (Ink & Sigil, #1))