Future Toxic Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Let us disobey the petrification of our mind before toxic thoughts transform our life into a matrix of numbers and columns and kills the bounciness of our drives, catching our future off guard. ("Digging for white gold")

Fire failure by fighting falsehood. Forget the fears; Fix the future; Flee from fake friends. There is nothing called half-truth. Whatever looks like a lie is a lie!

We should honor the past, we should remember it, and we should respect what it has taught us. But we don’t have to keep living there. That house is crumbling and toxic and far too small to contain you. It doesn’t support your present experience and it sure as fuck doesn’t fit into your future goals.

When i spend too much time in my head, focused on things in the past or things in the future... when i lose sight of the present, i fold in on myself, mentally, my thoughts become toxic and distorted, my emotions, darken.

Let go of the naysayers who only serve to bog you down with negative messages, and find positive people who are excited about your future prospects. Some people were only meant to be a part of one aspect of your journey. If you can’t take them with you into the next phase of your life, then that’s okay; they have served their purpose. Don’t look back, and don’t overthink it.

Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed.

Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. No, no, wait. Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods. Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the road after the war. Once upon a time there were three little pigs. Once upon a time there were three brothers. No, this is it. This is the variation I want. Once upon a time there were three Beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts. Bounce, effort, and snark. Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. Sugar, curiosity, and rain. And yet, there was a witch. There's always a witch. This which was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening. The eldest boy was strong and fast, capable and handsome. Though it's true, he was exceptionally short. The next boy was studious and open hearted. Though it's true, he was an outsider. And the girl was witty, Generous, and ethical. Though it's true, she felt powerless. The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic. She confuse being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them. She confuse being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it. She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts are making them think. Hey magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn in their tenth birthday, but did not harm them out right. The protection of some kind fairy - the lilac fairy, perhaps - prevented her from doing so. What she did instead was cursed them. "When you are sixteen," proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy, "you shall prick your finger on a spindle - no, you shall strike a match - yes, you will strike a match and did in its flame." The parents of the beautiful children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle on a windswept Island. A castle where there were no matches. There, surely, they would be safe. There, Surely, the witch would never find them. But find them she did. And when they were fifteen, these beautiful children, just before their sixteenth birthdays and when they're nervous parents not yet expecting it, the jealous which toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blonde meeting. The maiden befriended the beautiful children. She kissed him and took them on the boat rides and brought them fudge and told them stories. Then she gave them a box of matches. The children were entranced, for nearly sixteen they have never seen fire. Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen. Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls. Go on, she said, for you are independent thinkers. Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you did not take action? And they listened. They took the matches from her and they struck them. The witch watched their beauty burn, Their bounce, Their intelligence, Their wit, Their open hearts, Their charm, Their dreams for the future. She watched it all disappear in smoke.

Most people seem to get bored easily when having an easy life, and need to feed on drama and conflicts to feel alive. They are like vampires and zombies, that feed on the anger of others. The flesh and blood is replaced here by life energy. Now, the main point here is that toxic women and toxic men do make us sick. And life goes nowhere around such decadent souls. Alone, we have choices. With a mentally sick person in our life, you can’t make plans for the future. It's impossible to make long-term plans when teaming with people that are too obsessed with conflicts and selfish needs. And hopefully, there will come a time when such individuals are segregated from society and put in mental hospitals. Until that moment comes, we can only avoid them and label them toxic personalities.

But history teaches us nothing new. And should I choose to look ahead, to what is yet to come, why, I see a future made most toxic, born on the day society sets the value of wealth above that of lives.

What is a memory, anyway? Is it an indelible record, unimpeachable, frozen in some synaptic arrangement and stored away for some moment it might be needed in the future? Or is it subject to editing and revision, something plastic that our brains can shape into another form we can handle, something less toxic than the original, something less able to poison us?

We are born not knowing who we are, we don't know how to think. We only know how to feel. It is through our feelings that how we are raised creates the trajectory for out future lives. - Natasha Khazanov

Editorship and expertise are like vitamins for the food. You don’t need much of them, just a trace even for a large body. Too much will be toxic, or just flushed away. The

You are free to the choice that you want, but you are not free from the consequences of that choice. That choice you make today may break or make your family in future.

Feminist psychologists have suggested that a toxic friendship is often one in which a women's own personal growth and individuation is sacrificed at the expense of the demands of the other person. Sometimes choosing oneself rather than the friendship is important for future personal growth and individuation. But women have a difficult time separating from each other because emotional connection is so highly valued and broken friendships are seen as failures.

Really? That plaque over there says chivalry gave birth to toxic masculinity, which caused Old Earth a few millennia of bullshit patriarchy.

... toxic derivatives were underpinned by toxic economics, which, in turn, were no more than motivated delusions in search of theoretical justification; fundamentalist tracts that acknowledged facts only when they could be accommodated to the demands of the lucrative faith. Despite their highly impressive labels and technical appearance, economic models were merely mathematized versions of the touching superstition that markets know best, both at times of tranquility and in periods of tumult.

You cannot simply leave your success to chance. Find someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself and make them your mentor. This person will empower you to see a possible future, and believe that it can be obtained.

Trauma is in most cases multigenerational. The chain of transmission goes from parent to child, stretching from the past into the future. We pass on to our offspring what we haven’t resolved in ourselves. The home becomes a place where we unwittingly re-create, as I did, scenarios reminiscent of those that wounded us when we were small.

How often do you think we write our own ending before the story is even finished? How often do we give up on ourselves when our lives are just starting? Things get hard and we immediately back away and assume that means we're going in the wrong direction, doing the wrong thing. If anything, when the waters get thick, that's our sign to keep going

Her oceans were as toxic as the race of men who dwelled on her surface and called the blue planet home.

The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding of the rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporate government policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrous policies that must stop.

The only things that are truly, and uniquely ours is our thoughts, our dreams, our feelings, our creativity, and the way each of us sees our world. It's an injustus to ourselves, and the world to let anyone dictate any of those unique aspects about us, and to let them try and change who we are inside. Those who try, or those who don't respect your difference should be avoided because they are toxic, not only to you but to our society.

Mercy combined with justice creates:       •   immediate care with a future plan       •   emergency relief and responsible development       •   short-term intervention and long-term involvement       •   heart responses and engaged minds Mercy

As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic— full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it.

One day, we wake up to the narcissist’s cunning masquerade. We watch their fake mask slip off their face. Everything becomes crystal clear. We see right through their phony disguise. To anyone who’s dealt with the pain and torment of a narcissist, a silver lining is a sign of hope. Hope that someday you can break free from the abuse. Hope to rebuild a better life. Hope to find comfort and peace within. Hope to recover from your trauma. Hope to embrace a brighter future. We can no longer unsee their hideous charade. We accept how lethal a malignant narcissist is. We actively set healthy boundaries. We walk away from hurtful relationships. Like the Phoenix, we rise above the fiery ashes. We stand up, dust ourselves off, and march forward.

Cathy O’Neil claims that this reliance on historical data is a fundamental problem with many algorithmic systems: “Big data processes codify the past,” she writes. “They do not invent the future.

As Mazzini put it, writing in 1849: 'The masters of the world had united against the future.' But they had also left a poisoned chalice no less toxic than the acqua tofana whose menace exerted such a spell. When the future caught up with them, in 1917-18, it detonated a series of events which would cost the lives of untold millions and lead to the near-destruction of European civilization.

His father’s general mistrust of the future carried through to his thoughts on women. Like success, women would inevitably turn on you someday. He had a suspicion of women that bordered on paranoia. His son internalized these views as well.

We unconsciously gravitate toward relationships and situations that are familiar to us because we know how to deal with them. As children, we don’t recognize, or at least we don’t want to acknowledge, the flaws in our parents, because seeing them as flawed or substandard is scary. But by denying the painful truth about our parents, we aren’t able to recognize similarly hurtful people in our future relationships. This form of denial or lack of the ability to recognize the pattern causes us to experience the same painful heartbreak over and over. We just don’t see it coming, even when all the signs are right before us. Instead, we keep believing that things will be different each next time, but the different doesn’t come.

Months later, I learned that what happened that first day at restorative yoga hadn’t been entirely spiritual—I hadn’t just found the exact spot on the astral plane to tap into my sacred core. Instead, my instructor’s techniques happened to be the perfect mechanism to turn down my DMN. The default mode network is so-called because if you put people in an MRI machine for an hour and let their minds wander, the DMN is the system of connections in our brain that will light up. It’s arguably the default state of human consciousness, of boredom and daydreaming. In essence, our ego. So if you’re stuck in a machine for an hour, where does your mind go? If you’re like most people, you’ll ruminate on the past or plan your future. You might think about your relationships, upcoming errands, your zits. And scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs. Which makes sense. The DMN is the seat of responsibility and insecurity. It can be a punishing force when it over-ruminates and gets caught in a toxic loop of obsession and self-doubt. The DMN can be silenced significantly by antidepressants or hallucinogenic substances. But the most efficient cure for an overactive DMN is mindfulness. Here’s how it works: In order for the DMN to start whirring, it needs resources to fuel its internal focus. If you’re intently focused on something external—like, say, filling out a difficult math worksheet—the brain simply doesn’t have the resources to focus internally and externally at the same time. So if you’re triggered, you can short-circuit an overactive DMN by cutting off its power source—shifting all of your brain’s energy to external stimuli instead.

Jealousy and possessiveness in romantic relationships often destroy trust and mutual respect. Very often a jealous partner is re-enacting his pain from childhood. If he was emotionally and physically abandoned in childhood, he may be prone to jealousy in a romantic relationship. If a teenage girl was betrayed by her first love, and consequently was emotionally scarred, she may develop jealousy regarding future romantic relationships. Jealousy in a romantic relationship is based on control and possessiveness. A person suffering from jealousy unconsciously believes she is going to lose something or someone she does not own. The partner is afraid of losing her partner. She views him as an object, a possession. No one is a possession of another. The idea that we own or partly own our lovers, even if the sense of ‘ownership’ is purely emotional, is a delusion which brings suffering in its wake.

Darkness seems to have prevailed and has taken the forefront. This country as in the 'cooperation' of The United States of America has never been about the true higher-good of the people. Know and remember this. Cling to your faith. Roll your spiritual sleeves up and get to work. Use your energy wisely. Transmute all anger, panic and fear into light and empowerment. Don't use what fuels them; all lower-energy. Mourn as you need to. Console who you need to—and then go get into the spiritual and energetic arena. There's plenty work for us to do; within and without. Let's each focus on becoming 'The President of Our Own Life. Cultivate your mind. Pursue your purpose. Shine your light. Elevate past—and reject—any culture of low vibrational energy and ratchetness. Don't take fear, defeat or anger—on or in. The system is doing what they've been created to do. Are you? Am I? Are we—collectively? Let's get to work. No more drifting through life without your higher-self in complete control of your mind. Awaken—fully. Activate—now. Put your frustrations or concerns into your work. Don't lose sight. There is still—a higher plan. Let's ride this 4 year energetic-wave like the spiritual gangsters that we are. This will all be the past soon. Let's get to work and stay dedicated, consistent and diligent. Again, this will all be the past soon. We have preparing and work to do. Toxic energy is so not a game. Toxic energy and low vibrations are being collectively acted out on the world stage. Covertly operating through the unconscious weak spots and blind spots in the human psyche; making people oblivious to their own madness, causing and influencing them to act against–their–own–best–interests and higher-good, as if under a spell and unconsciously possessed. This means that they are actually nourishing the lower vibrational energy with their lifestyle, choices, energy and habits, which is unconsciously giving the lower-energy the very power and fuel it needs—for repeating and recreating endless drama, suffering and destruction, in more and more amplified forms on a national and world stage. So what do we do? We take away its autonomy and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. By recognizing how this energetic/spiritual virus or parasite of the mind—operates through our unawareness is the beginning of the cure. Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is—freedom. Our shared future will be decided primarily by the changes that take place in the psyche of humanity, starting with each of us— vibrationally. In closing and most importantly, the greatest protection against becoming affected or possessed by this lower-energy is to be in touch with our higher vibrational-self. We have to call our energy and power back. Being in touch with our higher-self and true nature acts as a sacred amulet, shielding and protecting us from the attempted effects. We defeat evil not by fighting against it (in which case, by playing its game, we’ve already lost) but by getting in touch with the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects— our higher vibrational-self. Will this defeat and destroy us? Or will it awaken us more and more? Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us and our stepping out of the unconscious influence of low vibrational/negative/toxic/evil/distraction energy (or whatever name you relate to it as) that is and has been seeking power over each of our lives energetically and/or spiritually, and step into our wholeness, our personal power, our higher self and vibrate higher and higher daily. Stay woke my friends—let's get to work.

It may seem counterintuitive, but this reflexive rejection of the loving mother is an adaptation: “I was so hurt when you abandoned me,” says the young child’s mind, “that I will not reconnect with you. I don’t dare open myself to that pain again.” In many children—and I was certainly one—early reactions like these become embedded in the nervous system, mind, and body, playing havoc with future relationships.

1910 there were more electric-powered cars on the streets of New York than gas-powered ones, and everyone back then assumed that electric cars were the future—they made a lot more sense than the crazy engines that ran on controlled explosions of volatile, toxic chemicals. But Rockefeller funded Ford to make sure that gas-powered cars, not electric, would be the way of the future, so he would have a place to sell his oil.” “I

While the psychiatric establishment was debating theories of toxic parenting and childhood psychosis, however, Asperger’s lost tribe was putting its autistic intelligence to work by building the foundations of a society better suited to its needs and interests. Like Henry Cavendish, they refused to accept their circumstances as given. By coming up with ways of socializing on their own terms, they sketched out a blueprint for the modern networked world.

Every time political leaders of the world meet in those funny events called G8 or G20, the failure of political power—their lack of grasp on the future—becomes more evident. When they met in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in July 2008, and in L’Aquila in July 2009, the powerful men and women who lead the nations were supposed to make very important decisions about the crucial subject of climate change and its effects on the planetary ecosystem. But they were completely unable to say or do anything meaningful, so they have decided that, by 2050, toxic emissions will be reduced by half. How? Why? No answer. No political or technological action has been taken, no shorter deadline has been decided upon. Such a decision is like a shaman’s ritual, like a rain dance. The complexity of the problem exceeds world politicians’ powers of knowledge and influence. The future has escaped the grasp of political technique and everything has capsized, perhaps because of speed.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

THRIVE ON CHANGE. Many of us get tired of hearing that mantra, especially when we must cope with changes disrupting what we most care about. Yet the relentless acceleration of change requires flexibility of all of us, whatever our skills and roles. We are hurtling into the future, and the future will soon be a very different culture. Like an immigrant to a land with different customs and languages, we have to continually adapt and cultivate mindsets that maintain both our integrity and capacity to contribute.

Healthy people don’t stay in unhealthy family dynamics. Healthy people don’t allow their parents to control their life, they live for themselves. Healthy people don’t follow the career path their parents want them to take, they choose the right path for themselves. Healthy people don’t marry someone to meet the expectations of their family, they commit to someone who they love and makes them happy. Healthy people don’t let their abusive family members define them, they seek help and build a better future for themselves

Texas governor Rick Perry labeled Trump “a cancer on conservatism” and a threat to the nation’s future. “The White House has been occupied by giants,” Rick noted. “But from time to time it is sought by the small-minded—divisive figures propelled by anger, and appealing to the worst instincts in the human condition.” Perry said the businessman was peddling a “carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense” and that he was running on “division and resentment.

But her no leather - no fur policy drew fire. Critics charged that faux hides, many of which are petroleum based, were more damaging to the earth than the real stuff. Bull, said McCartney. "Livestock production is one of the major causes of ... global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity", she shot back, with more than fifty million animals farme and slaughtered each year just to make handbags and shoes. Conventional leather tanning employs heavy metals such as chromium, which results in waste that is toxic to humans.

The whole premise of Joe’s struggle to stay in school was the prospect of a more promising future afterward. It had not occurred to him that doors wouldn’t just open for a man with a college degree. And once again it was pounded home to him how many of his classmates apparently did not even have to think about money, how many had people watching out for them, shelling out thousands of dollars they never expected to see again. It stirred up the old anxiety and self-doubt that always threatened to bubble to the surface. And it added something new to the mix—a toxic dash of jealousy.

Toxic positivity was also used regularly to silence and cast off Indigenous and Black citizens. Scientific studies were produced that argued Black people had smaller brains and that this is why they were prone to more emotional dysregulation and were ultimately a threat to happiness. The goal was to prevent "racially fit individuals from developing racially poisonous emotional states and behaviors, which could harm the hereditary stock of future happy and healthy societies." This meant separating racial groups in an attempt to "protect" white people from the poisonous nature of other groups.

The whole premise of Joe’s struggle to stay in school was the prospect of a more promising future afterward. It had not occurred to him that doors wouldn’t just open for a man with a college degree. And once again it was pounded home to him how many of his classmates apparently did not even have to think about money, how many had people watching out for them, shelling out thousands of dollars they never expected to see again. It stirred up the old anxiety and self-doubt that always threatened to bubble to the surface. And it added something new to the mix—a toxic dash of jealousy. PART THREE 1935 The Parts That Really Matter

It’s true, organic food is more expensive to grow, and we have to be willing to pay for it. Some people see that as a luxury. I always come back to the same question: Would we rather give our money to the farmer or the pharmacist, the grocer or the doctor? Do we want to spend a fortune in the future trying to fix the damage being done today? Once we compare the potential risk and reward, the extra cost of eating clean food may seem worth it. Eating is the single most important thing we can do to stay healthy. If good, clean food isn’t worth our money, what is? Organic blackberries cost double the normal kind? How does that compare to the price of chemotherapy? How does burning out your insides with toxic chemicals and destroying your immune system and puking out your guts and losing all your hair stack up against spending three dollars more on that organic produce? Your body responds to what you put inside it. It’s simple. How could anything else be possible? You’d accept that if we were talking about your car. Why not your body? Clean also means food that contains no genetically modified organisms—GMOs. This is the really scary stuff, and it’s in the news every day as the big corporations fight every effort to label engineered foods. The fact that the industry is against truth in labeling tells us all we need to know.

But when I think about ponds infested with gallon-big goldfish, I feel a kind of triumph. I see something that no one expected to live not just alive but impossibly flourishing, and no longer alone. I see a creature whose present existence must have come as a surprise even to itself. Imagine having the power to become resilient to all that is hostile to us. Confinement, solitude, our own toxic waste... Imagine the freedom of encountering space for the first time and taking it up... A dumped goldfish has no model for what a different and better life might look like, but it finds it anyway. I want to know what it feels like to be unthinkable too, to invent a future that no one expected of you.

I’ve come to see that just as the Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify white Christian supremacy and the exploitation of nonwhites and non-Christians, the “doctrine of dominion” (Genesis 1:28) is still being used to justify human supremacy and the exploitation of the earth and all its creatures. Aided and abetted by harmful doctrines about the future (especially “left behind” dispensationalist eschatology), industrial-era Christians have used toxic, industrial-strength beliefs to legitimize the plundering of the earth, without concern for future generations of humans, much less our fellow creatures. After all, if Jesus is coming back soon, and if God will soon destroy the earth and take righteous souls to heaven, who cares about the earth? What’s a little human domination in comparison to divine damnation?

Prayer is one of the few spiritual practices that is pointless unless God is real. Meditation calms the body whether or not there's a spiritual being receiving our deliberate breathing and clear mind. Reading sacred texts aligns us with the wisdom of our ancestors whether or not it was divinely inspired. Church attendance connects us to the needs of our community. Fasting cleanses the body of toxic substances. Resting on Sundays allows us to let go of stress and worry. But prayer? Taking time to pour out our needs and our anxieties, demanding change, confessing sin, crying out for help - all of these things depend upon the existence of God, and specifically the existence of a God who hears and responds to our cries. Prayer in the face of insurmountable problems is an admission of weakness and need. Prayer is a commitment to a better future, a sign of faith that the world will one day be made right. Prayer is an act that emerges out of helplessness. Prayer is an act of hope.

Deep underground, microbes turn half a century's worth of city waste into methane. The gases and leachate are extracted through an extensive network of subterranean pipes and then used to power 22,000 nearby homes. While 150 million tons of garbage gradually decomposes unseen below the surface, above ground, the former dump reverts to meadows, woodland and saltwater marshes, providing a haven for wildlife and a massive park for the people of New York. This is Fresh Kills in the 2020s. In 2001, the infamous landfill received its last, and saddest, consignments - the charred debris of the World Trade Center. Since then, it has been transformed into a 2,315-acre public park. Three times bigger than Central Park, it is the largest new green public space created within New York City for over a century, a mixture of wildlife habitats, bike trails, sports fields, art exhibits and playgrounds. This is poisoned land: fifty years' worth of landfill has killed for ever one of the city's most productive wetland ecosystems. Restoration is impossible. Instead, a brand new ecosystem is emerging on top of the toxic garbage

Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled by sustained lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption--even murder and genocide--generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship. By lying, we deny others our view of the world. And our dishonesty not only influences the choices they make, it often determines the choices they *can* make--in ways we cannot always predict. Every lie is an assault on the autonomy of those we lie to. By lying to one person, we potentially spread falsehoods to many others--even to whole societies. We also force upon ourselves subsequent choices--to maintain the deception or not--than can complicate our lives. In this way, every lie haunts our future. We can't tell when or how it might collide with reality, requiring further maintenance. The truth never needs to be tended like this. It can simply be reiterated. The lies of the powerful lead us to distrust governments and corporations. The lies of the weak make us callous toward the suffering of others. The lies of conspiracy theorists raise doubts about the honesty of whistle-blowers, even when they are telling the truth. Lies are the social equivalent of toxic waste: Everyone is potentially harmed by their spread.

«It's not easy to believe.» «I» she told him, «I can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.» «Really?» «I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in "War of the Worlds". I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kind of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.»

No matter where you are on the pathway of your life, please don’t let the pain of an imperfect past hinder the glory of your fabulous future. You are so much more powerful than you may currently understand. Splendid victories—and outright blessings—are coming your way. And you’re exactly where you need to be to receive the growth necessary for you to lead the unusually productive, extremely prodigious and exceptionally influential life that you’ve earned through your harshest trials. Nothing is wrong at this moment, even if it feels like everything’s falling apart. If you sense your life’s a mess right now, this is simply because your fears are just a little stronger than your faith. With practice, you can turn down the volume of the voice of your scared self. And increase the tone of your most triumphant side. The truth is that every challenging event you’ve experienced, each toxic person that you’ve encountered and all the trials you’ve endured have been perfect preparation to make you into the person that you now are. You needed these lessons to activate the treasures, talents and powers that are now awakening within you. Nothing was an accident. Zero was a waste. You’re definitely exactly where you need to be to begin the life of your most supreme desires. One that can make you an empire-builder along with a world-changer. And perhaps even a history-maker.” “This all sounds easy but it’s a lot harder in reality,” shouted a man in a red baseball cap, seated in the fifth row. He sported a gray t-shirt and ripped jeans, the type you can buy torn at your local shopping mall. Though this outburst could have seemed disrespectful, the pitch of the participant’s voice and his body language displayed genuine admiration for The Spellbinder. “I agree with you, you wonderful human being,” responded The Spellbinder, his grace influencing all participants and his voice sounding somewhat stronger, as he stood up from his chair. “Ideas are worth nothing unless backed by application. The smallest of implementations is always worth more than the grandest of intentions. And if being an amazing person and developing a legendary life was easy, everyone would be doing it. Know what I mean?

I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in this universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud.

I called them “toxic foods” because they are unhealthful and can cause harm to your future baby. They include swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish, soft cheeses and unpasteurized milk, hot dogs, luncheon meats, deli meats, raw or smoked seafood, raw or undercooked meat, unwashed vegetables, raw vegetable sprouts, unpasteurized juices, liver, saturated fats, trans fats, partially hydrogenated oils, added sugars including high-fructose corn syrup, refined flour, and herbal preparations.

Hmm,” said Tammy, “and once more your naive optimism regarding the human species reveals its hopeless disconnect with reality. While it was well-established that prior to the Great EM Pulse following the Benefactors’ arrival in Earth orbit, virtually every human being on the planet had already become a drooling automaton with bloodshot eyes glued to a pixelated screen, even as the world melted around them in a toxic stew of air pollution, water pollution, vehicles pouring out carcinogenic waste gases, and leaking gas pipelines springing up everywhere along with earthquake-inducing fracking and oil spills in the oceans and landslides due to deforestation and heat waves due to global warming and ice caps melting and islands and coastlines drowning and forests dying and idiots building giant walls and—” “All right, whatever!” Hadrian snapped. “But don’t you see? This is the future!” “Yeah, that statement makes sense.” “The future from then, I mean. Now is their future, even if it’s our now, or will be, I mean—oh fuck it. The point is, Tammy, we’re supposed to have matured as a species, as a civilization. We’re supposed to have united globally in a warm gush of integrity, ethical comportment, and peace and love as our next stage of universal consciousness bursts forth like a blinding light to engulf us all in a golden age of enlightenment and postscarcity well-being.” “Hahahaha,” Tammy laughed and then coughed and choked. “Stop! You’re killing me!” Beta spoke. “I am attempting to compute said golden age, Captain. Alas, my Eternally Needful Consumer Index is redlining and descending into a cursive loop of existential panic. All efforts to reset parameters yield the Bluescreen of Incomprehension. Life without mindless purchase? Without pointless want? Without ephemeral endorphin spurts? Without gaming-induced frontal lobe permanent degradation resulting in short-tempered antisocial short-attention-span psychological generational profiles? Impossible.” “The EMP should have given us the breathing space to pause and reevaluate our value system,” said Hadrian. “Instead, it was universal panic. Riots in Discount Super Stores, millions trampled—they barely noticed the lights going out, for crying out loud.

Was it just a coincidence that the only women who rose through the ranks in this industry acted like poster children for toxic masculinity? Was that my future, if I stayed in the business?

Belonging to the peer group is paramount. One's whole sense of identity is coming together in adolescence. If one has a good foundation prior to adolescence, the sense of self can be preliminarily defined. Identity is always social―one's sense of self needs to be matched by others: one's friends, teachers and parents. Adolescence is the time the brain (frontal lobes) is reaching full maturity. It is a time of ideals, of questioning and projecting into the future. An adolescent needs to have the discipline of mind the philosopher Thomas Aquinas called studiasitas. Studiasitas is a disciplined focus on studies and thinking, a kind of temperance of the mind. Its opposite is curiositas, a kind of mental wandering all over the place without limits. Healthy shame at this stage is the source of good identity, a disciplined focus on the future and on studious limits in pursuing intellectual interests.

Adversity is an opportunity to learn, grow, and apply the knowledge of your experience to your future decisions.

We can't sacrifice the futures of girls and femmes to preserve the futures of young toxic men or the institutions that made them possible. Nor can we pretend that feminism is fracturing our communities. It's the patriarchy; it's always the patriarchy.

You are learning to love and accept yourself unconditionally. And you are courageous enough to move away from toxic relationships and learn how to stay away from them in the future.

Everything about his life that wasn’t about being an elite badass was imploding. There seemed to be only one sane option: get the hell away from other human beings. Amundson took a leave of absence from work, bought an Airstream trailer, and leased a parcel of land in the mountains near Santa Cruz. For two months, he lived in the woods and rolled back the tape on the last fourteen years of his life as a SWAT team cop, Army reservist, DEA gunslinger, and husband. He wrote an after-action review of his marriage, Your Wife Is Not Your Sister, a self-critique so detailed and unstinting that it could have been subtitled Confessions of a Knuckle-Dragger. The book, lovingly dedicated to his ex-wife, is filled with recollections of moments when he thought he was justified but later realized his behavior was thoughtless, myopic, toxic. At the end of each chapter are concrete “Action Steps” to prevent fellow knuckle-draggers from repeating his mistakes. It’s been well received in the law enforcement community.

Everything about his life that wasn’t about being an elite badass was imploding. There seemed to be only one sane option: get the hell away from other human beings. Amundson took a leave of absence from work, bought an Airstream trailer, and leased a parcel of land in the mountains near Santa Cruz. For two months, he lived in the woods and rolled back the tape on the last fourteen years of his life as a SWAT team cop, Army reservist, DEA gunslinger, and husband. He wrote an after-action review of his marriage, Your Wife Is Not Your Sister, a self-critique so detailed and unstinting that it could have been subtitled Confessions of a Knuckle-Dragger. The book, lovingly dedicated to his ex-wife, is filled with recollections of moments when he thought he was justified but later realized his behavior was thoughtless, myopic, toxic. At the end of each chapter are concrete “Action Steps” to prevent fellow knuckle-draggers from repeating his mistakes. It’s been well received in the law enforcement community. At the end of his two-month woodland retreat, Amundson realized two things. The first was that it doesn’t matter how much of a firebreather you are if you can’t cut any slack to the important people in your life. The second was that all his macho law-and-order jobs had defined him, and if he wanted to stop being That Guy, he couldn’t work that kind of job.

In the years after the industrial revolution, when securing a future for your kids meant raising obedient factory workers, the pervasive style in many developed countries was authoritarian. This gave way to an authoritative style in some high-income countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada—starting in the 1980s, when parents shifted their focus to raising kids to be desirable white-collar workers: innovative thinkers with college degrees. For parents who feel pressured by increasing economic precarity, a permissive style feels like a risk they can’t afford.

Help kids keep achievement in perspective. Parents can put “bad” grades into perspective by explaining what they truly are: a measure of their knowledge that day. A bad grade does not determine how well they’ll perform in the future, how much a teacher likes them, or how much their parents value them, and our kids need to know this explicitly, notes Lisa Damour.

We are a Sad generation indeed. Everyday , We are entertained by scandals, gossip, rumors and quarrels. We want to argue about everything. Yet , We are senseless, careless, clueless and we know less. We are entertained by negativity . We find joy and comfort in the pain of others. We are used being entertained by negativity that if there is none, We are looking for one. We are amused by divorces, breakups, cyber bullying, retrenchment, and when others are failing. That is why ? We want those who are doing well to fall. We glamourize being toxic, alcoholics, drug addicts, adulterous, Blessers and being disrespectful. We are excited by violence, chaos and disruption. We celebrate hypocrisy and barbaric behavior. We idolize criminals and reckless behavior. We are enjoying bad news. That we surround ourselves with it. We are bewitching our minds. No good will come out of us. When we surround ourselves with bad things. We will end up being bad ourselves.

In the 2019 Harvard Health Publishing article on how past trauma can haunt your future health, researchers state that a person's risk for mental and physical health problems rise as the number of traumatic events experienced increases. In other words, someone with five traumatic experiences will have a higher chance of developing health issues than someone who had only one negative adverse childhood experience.

The women I interviewed seemingly “opted out” of what Rachel, whom I cited earlier, called “the enormous experiment of engaging in capitalism.” Their choice to leave the workplace can be seen, as some of them suggested, as a resistance to neoliberal capitalism—to its exclusive valorization of the sphere of commodity production and the toxic competitive work cultures on which it depends. Their embrace of full-time motherhood can be understood as an attempt to shift priorities and to put care before competition. It is seemingly removed from the demands of advanced capitalism and the public sphere of work that they left, but which their government promotes and their husbands—mostly in high-powered, high-income jobs—occupy. Yet, as a consequence of heading home—a choice that was in part imposed by the pressures of advanced capitalism—women have become heads of their home who run their families as small enterprises, and endorse “intensive mothering”72 as a means of trying to ensure the invincible middle-class future and security of their children. In rechanneling their professional skills and competitive spirit through their children, and taking on the role of family CEO, these women may be reproducing what many found so brutal in the workplace. They have reproduced neoliberalism in the sense that their children have become human capital—investing in them is a way of increasing good returns in the future.73 In the words of Sara, the former senior financial director, “And the competition lives on, it’s just in a totally different guise.”" (from "Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality" by Shani Orgad)

And this is how it happens. Someone does something shit to you, makes you suffer, maybe you die, and you get tunnel vision for the revenge you want to feel in your hands—The punishment you believe you deserve to dole out. You come back to find the fucker that ruined your life and you’ll do anything you can to get them back. You can’t see anything else and everyone becomes collateral damage to the pain you have to cause or the justice you have to find. It hurts too much to think of what someone else took from you, that you can’t see anything outside of the future you can’t grasp anymore. Then, when you hurt someone else because your focus is on whoever fucked you up, they come back feeling the same pain, same anger, their future taken from them too and it just keeps going, again and again, over and over, until everyone’s been promised mutual destruction by proximity and nothing else matters. No one cares about any story that’s not their own. The pain caused is invisible to everyone else until it becomes personal and everyone’s reaching for the thing that blew their lives to pieces. Regret and rage are toxic seeds, planted to consume the heart.

As Jonathan Haidt and others have demonstrated, people are at their worst when they’re allowed to lob jabs at others behind a shield of anonymity. When their real-world reputations are at risk, they may take more care. I argued in chapter 2 that embracing transparency is a core part of how the Internet can motivate generous behavior. Indeed, I believe it played a key role in Facebook’s early astonishing growth story, gaining its first million users within just a year and then a further six million in the following two. This was not only in spite of being closed off to the general public but likely because of it, too. At that time, every profile was attached to an email address linking to an educational institution, which brought with it a layer of identity authentication. People were accountable to their real-life reputations and suddenly able to build on them in ways unlike ever before. But as this feature slipped by the wayside, and now without a real reputation to uphold, Joe Bloggs switched to User94843 and trolled toward this more toxic future. Bringing back this social dynamic, by requiring users to prove who they are, is perhaps the biggest single step big tech can make toward fostering a genuinely social media environment. There are definitely cases where people living under repressive regimes need ways to use the Internet anonymously. But the mainstream usage of social media should not.

Our aspirations are too often tainted by our greed, tarnished by the foolishness of our trifling agendas, leveraged by the rot of our biases, infected by adherence to the toxicity of politically-correct propaganda, and misappropriated by our desire for acclaim and acceptance. And the subsequent rot that gorges itself on such aberrant behaviors is veneered thick with lies that incessantly deny that any such rot exists or that it is being liberally fed. Prayer is the single force that has both the potency and capacity to transform our greed into grace, make sacrifice our agenda, bring bias to heel at the feet of a passion to bless, transform the corrosive constraints of politics into an unquenchable thirst to serve, and rest in the fact that if God accepts us no other acceptance is necessary. Prayer is the game-changer. The culture-changer. The life-changer. Make no mistake about it. It is the answer to the desperation of our times and the hope of a future.

nostalgia can be toxic,’ I went on, sure I had a point. ‘It can poison us if we let it, it stops us from finding joy in our present. We’re so in love with our idea of our past, we can’t trust that there are good things waiting for us in the future. And we have to move on. We have to make bold steps and believe in ourselves and in each other.

In order to view my father's actions, and certainly those of the other men in this book, through the lens of Pleck's paradigm and Levant and Pollack's strain, it's necessary first to acknowledge their problematic nature. For years my father mistreated, abused, and harassed my mother. This is a fact that I've witnessed for years and I know, without a doubt, that it's left my mother with psychological trauma. No examination is meant to excuse that behavior....but it is important, I think, to consider, for the health and benefit of women like my mother and the millions of other women who have suffered abuse, just what kind of forces influence abusive actors like my father. To get better, we need to study the problem, come to grips with it, diagnose it, and work to solve it. Nothing less than the future depends on us doing so.

EFFECTS The effects can be categorized into three parts: Inner connection For the rest of our life, an inward link to Reiki is created. With regular use, it will deepen. But if you haven't used Reiki for a while, don't worry. Even if you haven't been practicing it for many years and then suddenly feel it might be handy, just think about it, and it's going to be there. It may lay unconscious, so it can always be invoked. Healing hands and intuition Shortly after the tuning, we seem to have a feeling in our hands. It is experienced as intense warmth for many, tingling, or pulsating for others. Many people feel nothing about themselves and only understand they have soothing hands through the support they get when they position them on another human. Occasionally, after a tuning, Reiki can' turn on' itself. You may be seated on the underground and suddenly feel an intense heat settling on your lap with your paws. There's nothing to think about just enjoy what's happening. At that point, you definitely need Reiki. Many students are surprised by the increase in their intuitive skills. They become more aware of the feelings of other people and may even feel the events of the future. They tap into the universe's interconnectedness. A 21-day clearing process An attunement ends an inner cleansing process that is often most evident in the first three weeks (and thus called the 21-day clearing process). It can last as long as a few months in some cases, in many others, just a week. It's a good inner declutter, but the severity can vary. Some students have to use the bathroom more often (flushing out toxins); others have to relive their lives completely, encounter emotions, personality habits, visions, and experiences that are often as toxic as chemicals. But they can handle them now.

Many people are broken and without hope. It’s not surprising that a Brooking’s report in October 2019 noted how “deaths of despair” were affecting many sectors of society, particularly in America’s heartland.5 Carol Graham, Brooking Institution’s senior fellow, made this eye-opening observation: “The metric that really stands out is not sort of happy, or unhappy. Happy today doesn’t matter a whole lot. It’s hope for the future or lack thereof that’s really linked with premature mortality.”6

I love myself. I accept myself. I will not let the mistakes of my past determine my future. I am beautiful. I am lovely. I am worthy. I am enough. The life that God has for me is greater than anything I have ever imagined. I was made for more. I will have more. I decide to give myself more from this day forward. I forgive myself for the way I have treated myself and for the way I have allowed others to treat me. Please forgive me. I promise to honor you. I promise to give you the love that you deserve, and to put you first.

Second, you must understand that this war is not won overnight; it is a journey. In fact, there is no “arriving” at perfection. There is only continued healing and growth. The process of taking hold of your freedom requires examining your unresolved trauma and reflecting on how it negatively affects the way you view yourself, your relationships, and your everyday life. You will need to release any toxic emotions that come up during your self-examination. This will require gut-level honesty with yourself and others. But I promise that the future you can step into as a result is better than you can imagine. Are you ready to fight and win the war that will change your life? If so, gather yourself mentally, physically

A few years ago, many large language models had a problem. They were, to put it bluntly, racist. Users could quite easily find ways of making them regurgitate racist material, or hold racist opinions they had gleaned in scanning the vast corpus of texts on which they’d been trained. Toxic bias was, it seemed, ingrained in human writing and then amplified by AI.

Toxic relationships leave mental scars that have a long-lasting impact on you as a person as well as your future. They change your view of yourself and how you approach and operate in future romantic relationships.

There are parents who absolutely deserve to be cut out of one’s life. There are toxic people in the world, and you don’t owe toxic people anything. But if you think your relationship will matter to you in the future, then maybe it’s time to find some common ground.

On the other hand, when we are chronically made to feel like we don’t matter, when we are abused, ignored, or made to feel marginalized, we can behave in ways that force others to take notice of us—whether that’s obsessing over a perfect image, overworking, developing an eating disorder, or acting out in extreme ways (a school shooter being among the most visible and tragic examples). A lack of mattering is a strong predictor of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. When we don’t feel like we matter, we can turn inward: we give up, drink to escape, and even self-harm. People low on mattering tend to overgeneralize and catastrophize their thoughts, said Flett, convincing themselves that they don’t matter now and will never matter in the future. Flett’s research suggests that as many as one-third of adolescents in the United States and Canada do not believe they matter to others in their communities.

Abandon the notion of entertaining toxic individuals, banking on the possibility that they might be your saviors in an unforeseeable future; under the pretense of an uncertain tomorrow. Tomorrow is merely an extension of today; don't hesitate to break free from toxic bonds.

The use of coal should be discouraged, limited, and phased out as soon as possible.109 Coal production and consumption causes enormous damages. Coal contains mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, manganese, beryllium, chromium, and other toxic and carcinogenic substances. Coal crushing, processing, and washing releases tons of particulate matter and chemicals that contaminate water, harm public health, and damage ecological systems. Burning coal results in emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulates and mercury, all of which affect air quality and damage public health.

In the course of evolution humans have also lost huge numbers of working genes along with the abilities and traits they generated. In recent years scientists announced that human bitter-taste-receptor genes are losing their function. Identifying bitterness helps animals avoid toxic foods, precisely because so many of them taste bitter. For humans, however, an increase in meat consumption and a decrease in plant food, as well as the use of fire, which renders many toxins harmless, have meant that these bitter-taste-receptor genes are no longer maintained by natural selection. As a result they have effectively become useless.

If she had, instead, assumed that her colleague was being curious, possibly wanting to know what he needed to do to be selected for similar roles in the future, then she may have felt willing to mention the 2 previous projects she had co-facilitated and how her research was related to the focus on this team’s goals.

We can also use The Cycle as we anticipate how we may feel triggered in future situations. We can imagine how we might typically react unproductively and then visualize and practice more useful responses

Just like an athlete improves their performance by visualizing success, we can anticipate potential triggers and practice effective responses. In your journal, write about the following: What is a situation in the near future in which you anticipate you could feel triggered? Write out the common unproductive intentions you have thought in similar situations.

Among the diseases that can be chalked up to S. pyogenes are toxic shock syndrome, scarlet fever, strep throat, and a particularly scary one called necrotizing fasciitis, which has earned S. pyogenes the unpleasant epithet of “flesh-eating bacteria.

Great wealth is usually toxic to the well-being of children and family harmony. There is no evidence that people who have great wealth are happier as a result. Indeed, most research points in the other direction, and this is confirmed by my own experience of working with ultra-wealthy families. Great wealth brings its own pressures: family anxieties about maintaining the wealth, worries about personal security, tensions with non-wealthy relatives, fears about children being spoilt by wealth, or even abducted. Great wealth can distort every friendship – are they only interested in me because of what I own? Expect to hear more about social enterprise and impact investing – where the purpose is not just to make money but to do something that has a positive impact on society or the environment, even if the returns are lower than with other forms of investment.

In the mid-1990s, European bankers and their political friends realized that something “big” was going on in the Anglosphere and Europe ought either to embrace it or to reject it. Except that European officialdom lacks the political courage to do either and is bereft of the analytical capacity to take a stand on anything controversial. Their natural tendency is to fudge; to try to do both at once; to have their cake and eat it. So Brussels did nothing. Instead of regulating Europe’s banks, to stop them from loading up on the toxic paper that they were buying in droves, they whistled in the wind.

EXPAND PEOPLES’ CAPABILITIES. The fundamentals of this essential behavior don’t change. Even in tough times you can find ways to provide education and training as an investment in the company’s future. Even though promotions may be few and far between in this toxic environment, you can still find ways to stretch and test your people. It goes without saying that you need to do precise, accurate, and candid appraisals, but be sure you are looking for the qualities that matter amid the current turmoil: energy, courage, honesty, integrity, and perseverance. You need people who can roll with the punches, not people who are whiners and naysayers. You also need to rethink which people are more likely to rise to the top in the new environment as your organization’s strategy evolves.

When scientists discovered the limits of planetary sinks, they also discovered market failure. The toxic effects of DDT, acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, and climate change were serious problems for which markets did not provide a spontaneous remedy.

Yet among the multiple animal inventions at the dawn of the Cambrian were new forms of mobility. A number of critters began burrowing into these mats and braving the toxic soils beneath them. These digging, tunneling creatures are known as “bioturbators,” basically life that stirs up the ground. In fact, the fossils that officially define the beginning of the Cambrian in the geological record, Trichophycus pedum, are identified by the looping, burrowing patterns they left in the seafloor. Once this bioturbating disturbance of the Cambrian seafloor got started, it began changing the texture and chemistry of the dirt in ways that made it more inviting for other burrowing creatures. Oxygen began penetrating the loosened soil beneath the mats, neutralizing the lethal hydrogen sulfide. This started a positive feedback.

Come on then. Lazer beam me with your toxic futures. You will only talk and fornicate with AI. But hey, what an algorithm.

don’t think this is realistic,” he said. “The CEO would be an older white man.” My colleague and I agreed that might often be the case, but explained that we wanted to focus more on Linda’s needs and motivations than on how she looked. “Sorry, it’s just not believable,” he insisted. “We need to change it.” I squirmed in my Aeron chair. My colleague looked out the window. We’d lost that one, and we knew it. Back at the office, “Linda” became “Michael”—a suit-clad, salt-and-pepper-haired guy. But we kept Linda’s photo in the mix, swapping it to another profile so that our personas wouldn’t end up lily-white. A couple weeks later, we were back in that same conference room, where our client had asked us to share the revised personas with another member of his executive team. We were halfway through our spiel when executive number two cut us off. “So, you have a divorced black woman in a low-level job,” he said. “I have a problem with that.” Reader, I died. Looking back, both of these clients were right: most of the CEOs who were members of their organization were white men, and representing their members this way wasn’t a good plan for their future. But what they missed—because, I recognize now, our personas encouraged them to miss it—was that demographics weren’t the point. Differing motivations and challenges were the real drivers behind what these people wanted and how they interacted with the organization. We thought adding photos, genders, ages, and hometowns would give our personas a more realistic feel. And they did—just not the way we intended. Rather than helping folks connect with these people, the personas encouraged the team to assume that demographic information drove motivations—that

Some of the world’s largest corporations and richest people have organized and supported front groups whose role is to slag climate science and resist regulation, just as they did in response to the science that laid the foundation for regulating lead, asbestos, smoking, and other toxic substances and behaviors. They pursue this strategy because it works. Delayed regulation translates into greater profits, and no one goes to jail for lying to the American public about the risks of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, smoking, or toxic chemicals.

look at the toxic waste that most people put into the fertile garden of their minds every single day: the worries and anxieties, the fretting about the past, the brooding over the future and those self-created fears that wreak havoc within your inner world.

Hope dares to imagine the future as a legitimate alternative to the vicious repetitions of the past. But the refusal to forgive is a toxic memory that endlessly pulls the painful past into the present. The toxic memory of the unforgiven past poisons the present and contaminates the future. This toxic

What happens now?” Present Miesha added. “Will you stay here with us?” Future Miesha and Randal took the two future Mr. Molars by the hands. “Not a chance,” Future Miesha said as they walked past their present selves toward the platform.