“
Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It's one of the never-ending cycles in life.
”
”
Masashi Kishimoto
“
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived.
”
”
James Joyce (Ulysses: The 1922 Text)
“
What a treasure that smile was, passed down through the ages from father to son, tucked away in hope chests during son-less generations, buffed and displayed proudly whenever company was over.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4))
“
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
But we can choose a different world. In fact, we will choose a different world. The world will be different a generation from now. The question is whether we will look back in gratitude at the virtuous cycles or in horror at the vicious ones.
”
”
John Green (Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection)
“
So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...
”
”
Stanisław Lem (Solaris)
“
The body tires easily, but the spirit is always free and will help us get out, one day, from this infernal cycle of repeating the same mistakes every generation. Although
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Spy)
“
Success demands singleness of purpose.
You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.
It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.
Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.
The ONE Thing shows up time and again in the lives of the successful because it’s a fundamental truth.
More than anything else, expertise tracks with hours invested.
The pursuit of mastery bears gifts.
When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret...People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret.
Make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense.
”
”
Gary Keller (The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results)
“
She is tired of it all—tired of this endless cycle of death and birth, tired of investing any hope in the next generation, tired and frightened of finding more human beings to love, knowing full well that every person she loves will someday wound her, hurt her, break her heart with their deceit, their treachery, their fallibility, their sheer humanity.
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (The Space Between Us)
“
Yet, there was once a king worthy of that name. That king was Arthur. It is paramount disgrace of this evil generation that the name of that great king is no longer spoken aloud except in derision. Arthur! He was the fairest flower of our race, Cymry's most noble son, Lord of the Summer Realm, Pendragon of Britain. He wore God's favour like a purple robe.
Hear then, if you will, the tale of a true king.
”
”
Stephen R. Lawhead (Arthur (The Pendragon Cycle, #3))
“
Our Ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles.
One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal.
One cannot live without the other, each is the other's hope, meaning & strength.
”
”
Gemma B. Benton (Then She Sang A Willow Song: Reclaiming Life and Power with the Ancestors)
“
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected.
”
”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“
If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. —Thich Nhat Hanh, A Lifetime of Peace
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
How men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. Not as individuals, but women when they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another - then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps being laid. Of course they were right. Women were likely, as women, to take the next generations part, not this one's; they wove the links men saw as chains, the bonds men saw as bondage.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #6))
“
We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.
”
”
Amy Harmon (What the Wind Knows)
“
The more detailed we made our plans, the longer our cycle times became
”
”
Donald G. Reinertsen (The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development)
“
Remaining silent about family pain is rarely an effective strategy for healing it. The suffering will surface again at a later time, often expressing in the fears or symptoms of a later generation.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
Pain and dysfunction get passed down from generation to generation. A mixture of genetic inheritance and environmental circumstance ensures that our lives unfold according to a complex web of conditions that is infinitely larger than ourselves. The only way to stop the vicious cycle of reacting to pain by causing more pain is to step out of the system. We need to let our hearts fill with compassion, and forgive ourselves and others.
”
”
Kristin Neff (Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself)
“
Viewed in this way, the traumas we inherit or experience firsthand can not only create a legacy of distress, but also forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for generations to come.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
All we think about in the cycle of violence is men.
If we miss the oestrogen factor we cannot solve the cycle of violence. We cannot bring peace to the world unless we hold women accountable and morally responsible, particularly for their attacks upon children.
”
”
Stefan Molyneux
“
As I studied history, I saw that it typically transpires via relatively well-defined life cycles, like those of organisms, that evolve as each generation transitions to the next.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
I just told you that my father is not only evil but one of the world’ s most ancient evils, in service to the being that devoured part of your soul, and all you’ve got is ‘wow’?” He shakes his head. “This generation is doomed, I swear.
”
”
Tracy Deonn (Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle, #3))
“
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy. I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.
”
”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“
Healing generational trauma takes courage and strength. It’s common for dysfunctional families to deny their abuse. They silence victims and dump toxic shame onto them. Complicit families keep abuse alive from generation to generation, until one brave survivor boldly ends the cycle of abuse.
”
”
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
“
Sleeping inside each of them were fragments of traumas too great to be resolved in one generation.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
History was a cycle. Everything that had happened before, all the way back through the generations, would happen again.
”
”
James S.A. Corey (Persepolis Rising (The Expanse, #7))
“
It’s very rude to keep a woman bound for any more than two or three or seven generations.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
I instinctively understood that unaddressed pain often perpetuates cycles of hurt, passing from one generation to the next.
”
”
Shari Franke (The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom)
“
When we get hurt, our bodies immediately start trying to heal that hurt. This works for emotions as well. If we were scarred socially, by an incident of rejection or bullying, we immediately start trying to heal. Like pus comes out of wounds, emotions flow from psychological wounds.
And what do we really need at that moment? When we are out of that dangerous situation that scarred us, and we become triggered by some little thing - what do we need? Do we need someone to look at us and say, "Wow, you're really sensitive, aren't you?" or "Hey, man, I didn't mean it like that."? Do we need someone to justify their actions or tell us to take it easy, because the situation didn't really require such a reaction?
And, from ourselves, do we really need four pounds of judgment with liberal helpings of shame? Do we need to run away, to suppress, to hate our "over-sensitivity" to situations that seem innocuous to others?
No. We do not need all of these versions of rejection of a natural healing process. You would not feel shame over a wound doing what it must do to heal, nor would you shame another. So why do we do this to our heart wounds? Why do we do it to ourselves? To others?
Next time some harmless situation triggers you or someone around you into an intense emotion - realize it's an attempt at emotional healing. Realize the danger is no longer there, but don't suppress the healing of old dangers and old pains. Allow the pain. Don't react, but don't repress. Embrace the pain. Embrace the pain of others.
Like this, we have some chance at healing the endless cycles of generational repression and suppression that are rolling around in our society.
Fall open. Break open. Sit with others' openness. Let love be your medicine.
”
”
Vironika Tugaleva
“
■ A Prophet generation is born during a High. A Nomad generation is born during an Awakening. A Hero generation is born during an Unraveling. ■ An Artist generation is born during a Crisis.
”
”
William Strauss (The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny)
“
You're innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you, too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything."
"Everything?"
"Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think it's the only fixed point in the cosmos. but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there's one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault's Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it."
"God is everywhere."
"In a sense, yes. That's why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet..."
"And yet?"
"And yet... You're not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we're not the type to take things seriously.... Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many paces, and it's never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works.... Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor Garamond."
"To hang the Pendulum?"
"Ah, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If you are going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say you'll do. Come, let the boss touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula.
”
”
Umberto Eco (Foucault’s Pendulum)
“
Our children pay a heavy price when we lack consciousness. Overindulged, over-medicated, and over-labeled, many of them are unhappy. This is because, coming from unconsciousness ourselves, we bequeath to them our own unresolved needs, unmet expectations, and frustrated dreams. Despite our best intentions, we enslave them to the emotional inheritance we received from our parents, binding them to the debilitating legacy of ancestors past. The nature of unconsciousness is such that, until it’s metabolized, it will seep through generation after generation. Only through awareness can the cycle of pain that swirls in families end. T
”
”
Shefali Tsabary (The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children)
“
Aurora Legion squads will be known for their honor. Their willingness to hold the line. They will be champions of peace, of justice. And for generations, people in need will sigh in relief when they see our ships arrive.
”
”
Jay Kristoff (Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle, #3))
“
This crisis didn’t have to happen. America had a boom-and-bust cycle from the 1790s to the 1930s, with a financial panic every ten to fifteen years. But we figured out how to fix it. Coming out of the Great Depression, the country put tough rules in place that gave us fifty years without a financial crisis. But in the 1980s, we started pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric, and we found ourselves back in the boom-and-bust cycle. When this crisis is over, there will be a once-in-a-generation chance to rewrite the rules. What we set in place will determine whether our country continues down this path toward a boom-and-bust economy or whether we reestablish an economy with more stability that gives ordinary folks a chance at real prosperity.
”
”
Elizabeth Warren (A Fighting Chance)
“
This toxic pattern within the broken family system will continue from one generation to the next, until one brave survivor finally ends the cycle of abuse. The dysfunction, bullying, and abuse didn’t start with you, but it most certainly can end with you.
”
”
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
“
Movements tend to become the practice ground for what we are healing towards, co-creating. Movements are responsible for embodying what we are inviting our people into. We need the people within our movements, all socialized into and by unjust systems, to be on liberators paths. Not already free, but practicing freedom every day. Not already beyond harm, but accountable for doing our individual and internal work to end harm and engage in generative conflict, which includes actively working to gain awareness of the ways we can and have harmed each other, where we have significant political differences, and where we can end cycles of harm and unprincipled struggles in ourselves and our communities.
”
”
Adrienne Maree Brown (We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice)
“
Over a long time, the coming and passing of several generations, the old farm had settled into its patterns and cycles of work - its annual plowing moving from field to field; its animals arriving by birth or purchase, feeding and growing, thriving and departing. Its patterns and cycles were virtually the farm's own understanding of what it was doing, of what it could do without diminishment. This order was not unintelligent or rigid. It tightened and slackened, shifted and changed in response to the markets and the weather. The Depression had changed it somewhat, and so had the war. But through all changes so far, the farm had endured. Its cycles of cropping and grazing, thought and work, were articulations of its wish to cohere and to last. The farm, so to speak, desired all of its lives to flourish.
Athey was not exactly, or not only, what is called a "landowner." He was the farm's farmer, but also its creature and belonging. He lived its life, and it lived his; he knew that, of the two lives, his was meant to be the smaller and the shorter.
”
”
Wendell Berry (Jayber Crow)
“
When we fight against and/or hide from unpleasant or painful sensations and feelings, we generally make things worse. The more we avoid them, the greater is the power they exert upon our behavior and sense of well-being. What is not felt remains the same or is intensified, generating a cascade of virulent and corrosive emotions. This forces us to fortify our methods of defense, avoidance and control. This is the vicious cycle created by trauma.
”
”
Peter A. Levine (In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness)
“
If you want to break the cycle, you have to do something you’ve never done before.
”
”
Robin S. Baker
“
The vicious housing cycle had already begun. Racist policies harmed Black neighborhoods, generating racist ideas that caused people not to want to live next to Blacks,
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
“
When later generations come to read about our history they will think they are reading a romance, and not believe a word of it.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, #2))
“
His thoughts churned up inside him, silt clouding a pool of water. Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. How arrogant we are, Adam thought, to deliver babies who can’t walk or talk or feed themselves. How sure we are that nothing will destroy them before they can take care of themselves. How fragile they were, how easily abandoned and neglected and beaten and hated. Prey animals were born afraid.
He had not known to be born afraid, but he’d learned.
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
To manage product development effectively, we must recognize that valuable new information is constantly arriving throughout the development cycle. Rather than remaining frozen in time, locked to our original plan, we must learn to make good economic choices using this emerging information.
”
”
Donald G. Reinertsen (The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development)
“
I wanted to support my mother, despite the complex emotions I harbored toward her. Perhaps it was because I could empathize with the experience of holding resentment against one’s parents and grappling with unresolved childhood trauma. I instinctively understood that unaddressed pain often perpetuates cycles of hurt, passing from one generation to the next. I’d never thought about it before, that even those who present a flawless facade to the world, like my mother, might be struggling with deep-seated issues that remain hidden from view. How their polished exterior can serve as a mask, concealing the inner turmoil and unhealed wounds that continue to fester beneath the surface.
”
”
Shari Franke (The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom)
“
One reason why the cycle of archetypes recurs is that each youth generation tries to correct or compensate for what it perceives as the excesses of the midlife generation in power. For example, Boomers (a Prophet generation, whose strength is individualism, culture and values) raised Millennial children (a Hero generation, whose strength is in collective civic action). Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves, they create opposing archetypes. Your generation isn’t like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you.
”
”
William Strauss
“
what are the generations for, please explain to me? Only to repeat fear and desire without a change? This cannot be what the thing is for, over and over and over. Any good man will try to break the cycle.
”
”
Saul Bellow (Henderson the Rain King)
“
Modern business is set up to squeeze out women who “want it all”—which is mostly just code for demanding equal pay for equal work. But the more empowered women in the workforce, the better. The more that women mentor women, the stronger our answer is to the old-boys’ network that we’ve been left out of. We can’t afford to leave any woman behind. We need every woman on the front lines lifting each other up . . . for the good of all of us and the women who come behind us. It’s tough to get past my own fears, so I have to remind myself that this is an experiment, to boldly go where no grown-ass woman has gone before. When we refuse to be exiled to the shadows as we mature, we get to be leaders who choose how we treat other women. If I don’t support and mentor someone like Ryan, that’s working from a place of fear. And if I put my foot on a rising star, that’s perpetuating a cycle that will keep us all weak. The actresses in the generation
”
”
Gabrielle Union (We're Going to Need More Wine)
“
Every time I got on my bicycle after a long hiatus it was like riding back to myself, the only way there. The dissipation of life in the city—days of to-do lists, errands, emails, small talk with strangers—generated static in my mind that I didn’t notice was there until I started pedalling and realized it was gone, the way you don’t hear the hum of a refrigerator until it stops. Such is the paradoxical freedom of cycling the Silk Road. In restricting the range of directions you can travel, in charging ordinary movement with momentum, a bike trip offers that rarest, most elusive of things in our frenetic world: clarity of purpose. Your sole responsibility on Earth, as long as your legs last each day, is to breathe, pedal, breathe—and look around.
”
”
Kate Harris (Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road)
“
once your brain is filled with all these negative emotions, you don’t really have a space to think anything other than a vicious cycle of negative thinking only. All creative people are joyful and positive about life.
”
”
Som Bathla (Think Out of The Box: Generate Ideas on Demand, Improve Problem Solving, Make Better Decisions, and Start Thinking Your Way to the Top)
“
Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [...] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. [...] But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at that moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.
”
”
Alan Lightman (Mr g)
“
Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colourless liquid with a slight chemical odour. It is used as an antiseptic, a solvent, in medical wipes and antibacterial formulas because it kills organisms by denaturing their proteins.
Ethanol is an important industrial ingredient. Ethanol is a good general purpose solvent and is found in paints, tinctures, markers and personal care products such as perfumes and deodorants.
The largest single use of ethanol is as an engine fuel and fuel additive. In other words, we drink, for fun, the same thing we use to make rocket fuel, house paint, anti-septics, solvents, perfumes, and deodorants and to denature, i.e. to take away the natural properties of, or kill, living organisms. Which might make sense on some level if we weren’t a generation of green minded, organic, health-conscious, truth seeking individuals. But we are.
We read labels, we shun gluten, dairy, processed foods, and refined sugars. We buy organic, we use natural sunscreen and beauty products. We worry about fluoride in our water, smog in our air, hydrogenated oils in our food, and we debate whether plastic bottles are safe to drink from.
We replace toxic cleaning products with Mrs. Myers and homemade vinegar concoctions. We do yoga, we run, we SoulCycle and Fitbit, we go paleo and keto, we juice, we cleanse. We do coffee enemas and steam our yonis, and drink clay and charcoal, and shoot up vitamins, and sit in infrared foil boxes, and hire naturopaths, and shamans, and functional doctors, and we take nootropics and we stress about our telomeres. These are all real words.
We are hyper-vigilant about everything we put into our body, everything we do to our body, and we are proud of this. We Instagram how proud we are of this, and we follow Goop and Well+Good, and we drop 40 bucks on an exercise class because there are healing crystals in the floor.
The global wellness economy is estimated to be worth $4 trillion. $4 TRILLION DOLLARS. We are on an endless and expensive quest for wellness and vitality and youth. And we drink fucking rocket fuel.
”
”
Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
“
Since high capacity utilization simultaneously raises efficiency and increases delay cost, we need to look at the combined impact of these two factors. We can only do so if we express both factors in the same unit of measure, life-cycle profits. If we do this, we will always conclude that operating a product development process near full utilization is an economic disaster.
”
”
Donald G. Reinertsen (The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development)
“
When your grandmother was five months pregnant with your mother, the precursor cell of the egg you developed from was already present in your mother’s ovaries. This means that before your mother was even born, your mother, your grandmother, and the earliest traces of you were all in the same body—three generations sharing the same biological environment.1 This isn’t a new idea: embryology textbooks have told us as much for more than a century. Your inception can be similarly traced in your paternal line. The precursor cells of the sperm you developed from were present in your father when he was a fetus in his mother’s womb.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
Transcendent renunciation is developed by meditating on the preciousness of human
life in terms of the ocean of evolutionary possibilities, the immediacy of death, the
inexorability of evolutionary causality, and the sufferings of the ignorance-driven,
involuntary life cycle. Renunciation automatically occurs when you come face-to-face
with your real existential situation, and so develop a genuine sympathy for yourself,
having given up pretending the prison of habitual emotions and confusions is just fine.
Meditating on the teachings given on these themes in a systematic way enables you to
generate quickly an ambition to gain full control of your body and mind in order at least
to face death confidently, knowing you can navigate safely through the dangers of further
journeys. Wasting time investing your life in purposes that “you cannot take with you”
becomes ludicrous, and, when you radically shift your priorities, you feel a profound
relief at unburdening yourself of a weight of worry over inconsequential things
”
”
Padmasambhava (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)
“
Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. How arrogant we are, Adam thought, to deliver babies who can’t walk or talk or feed themselves. How sure we are that nothing will destroy them before they can take care of themselves. How fragile they were, how easily abandoned and neglected and beaten and hated. Prey animals were born afraid.
He had not known to be born afraid, but he’d learned.
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
I don’t presume to grasp Aboriginal knowledge fully. It comes from a way of knowing the earth—an epistemology—different from that of my own culture. It speaks of being attuned to the blooming of the bitterroot, the running of the salmon, the cycles of the moon. Of knowing that we are tied to the land—the trees and animals and soil and water—and to one another, and that we have a responsibility to care for these connections and resources, ensuring the sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations and to honor those who came before. Of treading lightly, taking only what gifts we need, and giving back. Of showing humility toward and tolerance for all we are connected to in this circle of life. But what my years in the forestry profession have also shown me is that too many decision-makers dismiss this way of viewing nature and rely only on select parts of science. The impact has become too devastating to ignore. We can compare the condition of the land where it has been torn apart, each resource treated in isolation from the rest, to where it has been cared for according to the Secwepemc principal of k̓wseltktnews (translated as “we are all related”) or the Salish concept of nə́c̓aʔmat ct (“we are one”). We must heed the answers we’re being given.
”
”
Suzanne Simard (Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest)
“
If we know that the inevitable setbacks and frustrations are phases of the natural cycle of creative processes, if we know that our obstacles can become our ornaments, we can persevere and bring our desires to fruition. Such perseverance can be a real test, but there are ways through, there are guideposts. And the struggle, which is guaranteed to take a lifetime, is worth it. It is a struggle that generates incredible pleasure and joy. Every attempt we make is imperfect; yet each one of those imperfect attempts is an occasion for a delight unlike anything else on Earth
”
”
Stephen Nachmanovitch
“
So each generation set out to find more of its kind, and within just a few cycles of birth and death, the Club had spread not only through space, but also time, propagating itself forwards into the twentieth century and back into the Middle Ages, the death of each member spreading the word of what it was to the very extremes of the times in which they lived.
”
”
Claire North (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August)
“
The cycles of dysfunction and mental illness did not have to carry over from generation to generation. You just had to educate yourself. Erika
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Truly Madly Guilty)
“
Women were likely, as women, to take the next generation’s part, not this one’s; they wove the links men saw as chains, the bonds men saw as bondage.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #6))
“
But a generation that knows only how to travel — can they teach a generation how to arrive?
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (Hainish Cycle, #9))
“
I was now coming to realize that my ability to receive love from others was linked to my ability to receive my mother's love.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
I had always craved a close relationship with my father, yet neither he nor I knew how to make it happen.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
We aren’t destined to fall into the same patterns as those who came before us. Any cycle can be broken in one generation, as long as you have the will to be the change.
”
”
Jillian West (Ember's Claim (A Monstrous World: The Next Gen #1))
“
You men always try to tell our story. You men always get it wrong.
”
”
Clay McLeod Chapman (The Remaking)
“
the traumas we inherit or experience firsthand can not only create a legacy of distress, but also forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for generations to come.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
One day I knew the war would be over, but I wondered how long the remains of war would last in me and in them even after the bombs had stopped falling and the guns were silent. What I feared most was that my generation would teach the hatred and resentment I was learning at the hands of the Japanese to our own children and the cycle of disaffection and violence would never stop.
”
”
Louis Zamperini (Devil at My Heels)
“
Shifting is a kind of painkiller, and therefore the same as giving up. After all, if I wanted to kill my pain, why not choose the most effective method? Road-racing is all about generating pain.
”
”
Tim Krabbé (The Rider)
“
The cascade of toxins and debris generated by humans destabilizes nutrient return cycles, causing crop failure, global warming, climate change and, in a worst-case scenario, quickening the pace towards ecocatastrophes of our own making. As ecological disrupters, humans challenge the immune systems of our environment beyond their limits. The rule of nature is that when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its host environment, its food chains collapse and diseases emerge to devastate the population of the threatening organism. I believe we can come into balance with nature using mycelium to regulate the flow of nutrients. The age of mycological medicine is upon us. Now is the time to ensure the future of our planet and our species by partnering, or running, with mycelium.
”
”
Paul Stamets (Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World)
“
As I ran a few blades of grass between my fingers, enjoying the breeze as it caressed my face, I contemplated the cycle of life. As this year would host the long anticipated arrival of the Mayan Doomsday, marking the end of their long count calendar, I wasn’t alone in my ponderings. The whole world was focused on the potential that we would be the last generation; the witnesses of the world’s end.
”
”
J.M. Northup (A Ripple of Fear)
“
Doesn't it seem more reasonable to take action to heal the social pathology that generates crime than to use gun control to blow another political toe off American liberalism during each election cycle?
”
”
Joe Bageant
“
Listen to me. I did not wish to be summoned by your Princess. Summoned, I did not wish to come. But having been summoned, and having come, I mean to give a good account of myself. That’s how I was taught by my father, and the men of his age who slew Kings and swept away not merely Governments but whole Systems of Thought, like Khans of the Mind. I would have my son in Boston know of my doings, and be proud of them, and carry my ways forward to another generation on another continent. Any opponent who does not know this about me, stands at a grave disadvantage; a disadvantage I am not above profiting from.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, #3))
“
We seem to be in a continuing feedback loop of repeating a past that our country has yet to address. Our history is one of spectacular achievement (as in black senators of the Reconstruction era or the advances that culminated in the election of Barack Obama) followed by a violent backlash that threatens to erase the gains and then a long, slow climb to the next mountain, where the cycle begins again. The
”
”
Jesmyn Ward (The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race)
“
As I’ve said before, “the Mod generation”, contrary to popular belief, was not born in even 1958, but in the 1920s after a steady gestation from about 1917 or so. Now, Mod certainly came of age, fully sure of itself by 1958, completely misunderstood by 1963, and in a perpetual cycle of reinvention and rediscovery of itself by 1967 and 1975, respectively, but it was born in the 1920s, and I will maintain this. I don’t care who disagrees with me, and there are dozens of reasons that I do so —from the Art Deco aesthetic, to flapper fashions (complete with bobbed hair), to androgyny and subtle effeminacy, to jazz.
”
”
Ruadhán J. McElroy
“
In her relationships with humans, Artemis is primarily concerned with females, especially the physical aspects of their life cycle, including menstruation, childbirth, and death, however contradictory the association of these with a virgin may appear. (She is also cited as the reason for the termination of female life: when swift death came to a woman, she was said to have been short by Artemis.) The Artemis of classical Greece probably evolved from the concept of a primitive mother goddess, and both she and her sister Athena were considered virgins because they had never submitted to a monogamous marriage. Rather, as befits mother goddesses, they had enjoyed many consorts. Their failure to marry, however, was misinterpreted as virginity by succeeding generations of men who connected loss of virginity only with conventional marriage. Either way, as mother goddess or virgin, Artemis retains control over herself; her lack of permanent connection to a male figure in a monogamous relationship is the keystone of her independence.
”
”
Sarah B. Pomeroy (Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity)
“
Virtually every element of significant interest to industry is known to exist on the Red Planet. 1 With its twenty-four-hour day/ night cycle and an atmosphere thick enough to shield its surface against solar flares, Mars is the only extraterrestrial planet that will readily allow large-scale greenhouses lit by natural sunlight. Mars can be settled. For our generation and many that will follow, Mars is the New World.
”
”
Robert Zubrin (Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility)
“
In language that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, a young Moroccan named Brother Rachid last year called out President Obama on YouTube for claiming that Islamic State was “not Islamic”: Mr President, I must tell you that you are wrong about ISIL. You said ISIL speaks for no religion. I am a former Muslim. My dad is an imam. I have spent more than 20 years studying Islam. . . . I can tell you with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam. . . . ISIL’s 10,000 members are all Muslims. . . . They come from different countries and have one common denominator: Islam. They are following Islam’s Prophet Muhammad in every detail. . . . They have called for a caliphate, which is a central doctrine in Sunni Islam. I ask you, Mr. President, to stop being politically correct—to call things by their names. ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Taliban, and their sister brand names, are all made in Islam. Unless the Muslim world deals with Islam and separates religion from state, we will never end this cycle. . . . If Islam is not the problem, then why is it there are millions of Christians in the Middle East and yet none of them has ever blown up himself to become a martyr, even though they live under the same economic and political circumstances and even worse? . . . Mr. President, if you really want to fight terrorism, then fight it at the roots. How many Saudi sheikhs are preaching hatred? How many Islamic channels are indoctrinating people and teaching them violence from the Quran and the hadith? . . . How many Islamic schools are producing generations of teachers and students who believe in jihad and martyrdom and fighting the infidels?1
”
”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now)
“
business cycles and depressions stem from disturbances generated in the market by monetary intervention. The monetary theory holds that money and credit-expansion, launched by the banking system, causes booms and busts.
”
”
Murray N. Rothbard (America's Great Depression)
“
There was a study done with minimally educated voters who, given a hypothetical ballot, picked the names of famous serial killers over randomly generated names as well as over those of actual, less well-known politicians.
”
”
Malka Ann Older (Infomocracy (Centenal Cycle #1))
“
Let us all stop being controlled by the fear of disappointing others and let us all learn how to stop perpetuating the cycle of manipulating our children through their fear of disappointing us. The people we love are allowed to be disappointed in us and we are allowed to be disappointed in the people we love. Everyone is allowed to experience life as it may flow. Nobody is born as a safeguard to other people's life experiences. Live AUTHENTICALLY; do not live out of the fear of dissapointing others nor out of the fear of being disappointed. And above all: change the narrative for the next generation. Your kids were not born *for* you. People are born for themselves.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
once you become their Other, you’re no longer a person. You’re just an idea, an abstraction of everything that’s wrong with their world. Give them the slightest excuse, and they will tear you down. And the easiest way for them to target you as this Other is to find something that’s different about you. Color of your skin. The way you speak. The place you’re from. Magic. It comes and goes in cycles, Kate. Each new generation picks their own Other.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Slays (Kate Daniels, #5))
“
We seek compensation, true, but we also seek to prevent future abhorrent conduct by this or any other priest. We seek to punish a vicious predator of children and the religious institution that stands idly by and watches while a whole generation of God’s precious children are physically and psychologically raped of their childhood, their faith, and their trust in role models. This is about a hierarchy whose solution to the problem is to send the offending priest packing, quietly pay off victims, and actively cover up crimes. The cover-up is responsible for a vicious cycle of crime upon crime. This lawsuit says we will not go quietly like those who came before us. The vicious cycle stops here and now.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
The bitterness, the sin you retain, can produce the same results that hurt you. If you were raised in an abusive environment, if you come from a family filled with anger and dysfunction, instead of becoming bitter and angry, why don’t you be the one to put an end to the negative cycle?
You can be the one to make a difference. Are you holding on to anger and unforgiveness and passing poison down to the next generation? Or are you willing to let it go so your family can rise to a new level?
I realize it can be very hard to forgive, especially when someone has hurt you, but God will never ask you to do something without giving you the ability to do it.
Forgiveness is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t snap your fingers and make a hurt go away. That’s not realistic. But if you’ll continue to have the desire to forgive and ask God to help you, then little by little those negative feelings will fade. One day they won’t affect you at all.
”
”
Joel Osteen (Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week)
“
Question: What do patients recall when they look back, years later, on their experience in therapy? Answer: Not insight, not the therapist’s interpretations. More often than not, they remember the positive supportive statements of their therapist. I make a point of regularly expressing my positive thoughts and feelings about my patients, along a wide range of attributes—for example, their social skills, intellectual curiosity, warmth, loyalty to their friends, articulateness, courage in facing their inner demons, dedication to change, willingness to self-disclose, loving gentleness with their children, commitment to breaking the cycle of abuse, and decision not to pass on the “hot potato” to the next generation.
”
”
Irvin D. Yalom (The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients)
“
At his leisure, the lieutenant allowed the unforgettable spectacle to engrave itself upon his mind. With one hand he fondled the hair, with the other he softly stroked the magnificent face, implanting kisses here and there where his eyes lingered. The quiet coldness of the high, tapering forehead, the closed eyes with their long lashes beneath faintly etched brows, the set of the finely shaped nose, the gleam of teeth glimpsed between full, regular lips, the soft cheeks and the small, wise chin…
Wherever the lieutenant's eyes moved his lips faithfully followed. The high, swelling breasts, surmounted by nipples like the buds of a wild cherry, hardened as the lieutenant's lips closed about them. The arms flowed smoothly downward from each side of the breast, tapering toward the wrists, yet losing nothing of their roundness or symmetry…The natural hollow curving between the bosom and the stomach carried in its lines a suggestion not only of softness but of resilient strength, and while it gave forewarning to the rich curves spreading outward from here to the hips it had, in itself, an appearance only of restraint and proper discipline. The whiteness and richness of the stomach and hips was like milk brimming in a great bowl, and the sharply shadowed dip of the navel could have been the fresh impress of a raindrop, fallen there that very moment. Where the shadows gathered more thickly, hair clustered, gentle and sensitive, and as the agitation mounted in the now no longer passive body there hung over this region a scent like the smoldering of fragrant blossoms, growing steadily more pervasive…
Passionately they held their faces close, rubbing cheek against cheek…Their breasts, moist with sweat, were tightly joined, and every inch of the young and beautiful bodies had become so much one with the other that it seemed impossible there should ever again be a separation…From the heights they plunged into the abyss, and from the abyss they took wing and soared once more to dizzying heights…As one cycle ended, almost immediately a new wave of passion would be generated, and together -with no trace of fatigue- they would climb again in a single breathless movement to the very summit.
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Patriotism)
“
That same year—1969—was the bloodiest of the Vietnam War, the conflict that lay at the Awakening’s epicenter. From the Generation Gap to mob violence to rock music to the final exhaustion of the Great Society, this war was inseparable from the Awakening itself.
”
”
William Strauss (The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny)
“
Generational Patterns Since the beginning of recorded time, certain writers and thinkers have intuited a pattern to human history. It was perhaps the great fourteenth-century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun who first formulated this idea into the theory that history seems to move in four acts, corresponding to four generations. The first generation is that of the revolutionaries who make a radical break with the past, establishing new values but also creating some chaos in the struggle to do so. Often in this generation there are some great leaders or prophets who influence the direction of the revolution and leave their stamp on it. Then along comes a second generation that craves some order. They are still feeling the heat of the revolution itself, having lived through it at a very early age, but they want to stabilize the world, establish some conventions and dogma. Those of the third generation—having little direct connection to the founders of the revolution—feel less passionate about it. They are pragmatists. They want to solve problems and make life as comfortable as possible. They are not so interested in ideas but rather in building things. In the process, they tend to drain out the spirit of the original revolution. Material concerns predominate, and people can become quite individualistic. Along comes the fourth generation, which feels that society has lost its vitality, but they are not sure what should replace it. They begin to question the values they have inherited, some becoming quite cynical. Nobody knows what to believe in anymore. A crisis of sorts emerges. Then comes the revolutionary generation, which, unified around some new belief, finally tears down the old order, and the cycle continues. This revolution can be extreme and violent, or it can be less intense, with simply the emergence of new and different values.
”
”
Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
“
Pain patterns are vicious cycles, unconsciously passed from generation to generation in deeply entrenched behavioral and relational paradigms. They cannot be changed from the outside, only from within. Fear gives way to comfort, pain to healing, anger to peace, despair to hope, only when the heart of a person or the soul of a people feel safe enough to emerge from the hardened shell of self-preservation and become open to new possibilities. A hurting humanity cannot be healed by force, by arguing, shaming, threatening, manipulating. Those merely feed the pain patterns and harden their protective shells. Love, acceptance, empathy, compassion, those are the gentle rain that blossoms hurt into healing, transforming pain patterns into the peaceful flowering of a healthy, heart-whole humanity.
”
”
L.R. Knost
“
The cascade of toxins and debris generated by humans destabilizes nutrient return cycles, causing crop failure, global warming, climate change and, in a worst-case scenario, quickening the pace towards ecocatastrophes of our own making. As ecological disrupters, humans challenge the immune systems of our environment beyond their limits. The rule of nature is that when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its host environment, its food chains collapse and diseases emerge to devastate the population of the threatening organism.
”
”
Paul Stamets (Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World)
“
Uncannily, the Bible, in Numbers 14:18, appears to corroborate the claims of modern science—or vice versa—that the sins, iniquities, or consequences (depending on which translation you read) of the parents can affect the children up to the third and fourth generations. Specifically,
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generation of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."
-from "Song of Myself
”
”
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
“
What these modern myths illustrate is this: Your generation isn't like the generation that shaped you, but it has much in common with the generation that shaped the generation that shaped you. Archetypes do not create archetypes like themselves; instead, they create the shadows of archetypes like themselves.
”
”
William Strauss (The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny)
“
He had not known to be born afraid, but he’d learned. Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The
”
”
René Girard (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning)
“
Sometimes we say, “I didn’t want to do it, but it’s stronger than me, it pushed me. So that is a seed, a habit energy, that may have come from many generations in the past.We can smile at our shortcomings, at our habit energy. With awareness, we have a choice; we can act another way. We can end the cycle of suffering right now.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child)
“
Years come n go as we age,
Green is the youth, the fresh,
With time the green beckons
shade of gold, the golden era,
Alas! Nothing lasts forever,
Brown is the end for the leaf,
So is life for even the mighty,
That what begins has to end,
Gratifying what ends, begins
again for a new life, old love.
Generation to generation, Amen!
”
”
Mukesh Kwatra
“
The depth at which we take in the preceding generations astonishes me. There is likely an epigenetic component to this as well as transmission through the internalizations that get passed down through the generations. Whole cultures are carried forward that way, so it makes sense that family legacies might be transmitted that way as well.
”
”
Bonnie Badenoch (The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
“
The Big Multigenerational Psychological Cycle. Different generations think differently because of their different experiences, which leads them to make their decisions differently, which affects what happens to them and to subsequent generations. This is reflected in the adage “from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” Three generations is also roughly the length of time of a typical long-term debt cycle. However, history shows that when these cycles are handled well—i.e., strong human capital is maintained over many generations—they can go on for many generations. This multigenerational cycle takes place over several stages that are described in the addendum to this chapter.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
“
She is tired of it all—tired of this endless cycle of death and birth, tired of investing any hope in the next generation, tired and frightened of finding more human beings to love, knowing full well that every person she loves will someday wound her, hurt her, break her heart with their deceit, their treachery, their fallibility, their sheer humanity
”
”
Thrity Umrigar (The Space Between Us)
“
Because the abortion rights activists didn’t win this fight just for themselves. This fight and this victory was for their daughters, and their daughters’ daughters. To make sure a horrible cycle was broken, and the next generation would be better off than their own. To leave these women a world where no one can tell them that they don’t own their own bodies.
”
”
Heather Marshall (Looking for Jane)
“
hyperventilation reduces the concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood. This leads to a narrowing of blood vessels and reduced delivery of oxygen to the brain. An oxygen-deprived brain is more excitable and agitated, and as it floods with self-generated thoughts, anxiety kicks in. One contributes to the other, creating a vicious and self-perpetuating cycle.
”
”
Patrick McKeown (The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster and Fitter—Improve Your Health and Fitness with Efficient Breathing Techniques)
“
We are slowly reshaping womanhood in a modern generation, breaking free from the cycles of Black generational woman trauma. Grounded in the beauty of our ancestors' strengths, we embrace a shift, letting go of what no longer serves us. In our collective strength, we wield the power to flourish despite adversity, emerging as empowering forces to be reckoned with.
”
”
Jenaitre Farquharson
“
There are three things you need to be considered a truly great company, Collins continues, switching gears to Apple. Number one, you have to deliver superior financial results. Number two, you have to make a distinctive impact, to the point where if you didn't exist you couldn't be easily replaced. Number three, the company must have lasting endurance, beyond multiple generations of technology, markets, and cycles, and it must demonstrate the ability to do this beyond a single leader. Apple has numbers one and two. Steve was racing the clock [to help it get number three]. Whether it has lasting endurance is the final check, something we won't know for some time. There are lots of good people there, and maybe they'll get it.
”
”
Brent Schlender (Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader)
“
People who have been deeply traumatized by colonization, war, and violence have been in post-traumatic
shock for generations, while capitalism expertly endeavors to pacify intergenerational pain and create more cycles of addiction. Furthermore, corporations attempt to sedate hurt people who deserve healing, and get
richer from profiting off the pain that they have caused.
”
”
Mimi Zhu (Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection)
“
This crisis didn’t have to happen. America had a boom-and-bust cycle from the 1790s to the 1930s, with a financial panic every ten to fifteen years. But we figured out how to fix it. Coming out of the Great Depression, the country put tough rules in place that gave us fifty years without a financial crisis. But in the 1980s, we started pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric, and we found ourselves back in the boom-and-bust cycle. When this crisis is over, there will be a once-in-a-generation chance to rewrite the rules. What we set in place will determine whether our country continues down this path toward a boom-and-bust economy or whether we reestablish an economy with more stability that gives ordinary folks a chance at real prosperity. Done.
”
”
Elizabeth Warren (A Fighting Chance)
“
There are times in life when the cycle of the ages and the destruction of one generation’s work by the next is an uplifting thing, for it promises the young so much. And there are times, later in life, when you realise that it means that your work too will be swept away. Honestly, the only way to secure everlasting fame is to produce such a fine work that no age will ever rival it.
”
”
Ian Mortimer (The Outcasts of Time)
“
The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world’s biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level.
”
”
John McMurtry (The Cancer Stage of Capitalism, 2nd Edition: From Crisis to Cure)
“
When President Jimmy Carter, responding to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, called for the registration of young men for military draft, more than 800,000 (10 percent) failed to register. One mother wrote to the New York Times:
To the Editor:Thirty-six years ago I stood in front of the crematorium. The ugliest force in the world had promised itself that I should be removed from the cycle of life - that I should never know the pleasure of giving life. With great guns and great hatred, this force thought itself the equal of the force of life.
I survived the great guns, and with every smile of my son, they grow smaller. It is not for me, sir, to offer my son's blood as lubricant for the next generation of guns. I remove myself and my own from the cycle of death.
Isabella Leitner
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present)
“
We seem to be in a continuing feedback loop of repeating a past that our country has yet to address. Our history is one of spectacular achievement (as in black senators of the Reconstruction era or the advances that culminated in the election of Barack Obama) followed by a violent backlash that threatens to erase the gains and then a long, slow climb to the next mountain, where the cycle begins again.
”
”
Jesmyn Ward (The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race)
“
kids. This is one of the reasons why the “self-sacrificing parent” idea is so insidious. When we constantly sacrifice our own needs in favor of our children’s, we all lose. Our children lose out by having an ungrounded parent who is frequently on the brink of collapse. We lose out on enjoying our life and our children. We also perpetuate this harmful pattern—effectively passing the buck to the next generation.
”
”
Hunter Clarke-Fields (Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids)
“
Mass production was aimed at new sources of demand in the early twentieth century’s first mass consumers. Ford was clear on this point: “Mass production begins in the perception of a public need.”73 Supply and demand were linked effects of the new “conditions of existence” that defined the lives of my great-grandparents Sophie and Max and other travelers in the first modernity. Ford’s invention deepened the reciprocities between capitalism and these populations. In contrast, Google’s inventions destroyed the reciprocities of its original social contract with users. The role of the behavioral value reinvestment cycle that had once aligned Google with its users changed dramatically. Instead of deepening the unity of supply and demand with its populations, Google chose to reinvent its business around the burgeoning demand of advertisers eager to squeeze and scrape online behavior by any available means in the competition for market advantage. In the new operation, users were no longer ends in themselves but rather became the means to others’ ends. Reinvestment in user services became the method for attracting behavioral surplus, and users became the unwitting suppliers of raw material for a larger cycle of revenue generation.
”
”
Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power)
“
The pace of this modern age is not conducive to maintaining one’s consciousness. Glued to our electronics, we are blind and deaf to the world around us. Run down by our long work days, we are too exhausted to think and too hurried to feel. The day ends in a haze of strained thoughts, numbness, and fatigue. And we rise the next morning only to start the cycle again.
In this age of distraction, if you desire to fritter away your life with empty diversions, there is an abundance of gadgets available to aid you. Quietness is a characteristic of ages gone by. Our generation is the one it died with. Connected to the virtual world, we ignore the presence of those in our home. One can only hope we will awaken to the need for balance before we look up from the screen to find our loved ones have gone, and our life has passed us by.
”
”
L.M. Browning
“
When a parent is rejected or disrespected, one of the children will often
represent that parent by sharing the rejected behaviors. In this way, the child
makes himself or herself equal to the parent by suffering in a similar way. It is as
though the child is saying, “I’ll go through it, too, so that you don’t have to go
through it alone.” Loyal in this way, the child continues the suffering into the
next generation.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
The contamination of drinking water in dense urban settlements did not merely affect the number of V. cholerae circulating through the small intestines of mankind. It also greatly increased the lethality of the bacteria. This is an evolutionary principle that has long been observed in populations of disease-spreading microbes. Bacteria and viruses evolve at much faster rates than humans do, for several reasons. For one, bacterial life cycles are incredibly fast: a single bacterium can produce a million offspring in a matter of hours. Each new generation opens up new possibilities for genetic innovation, either by new combinations of existing genes or by random mutations. Human genetic change is several orders of magnitude slower; we have to go through a whole fifteen-year process of maturation before we can even think about passing our genes to a new generation.
”
”
Steven Johnson (The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World)
“
Who am I? What should I do in life? What is the meaning of life? Humans have been asking these questions from time immemorial. Every generation needs a new answer, because what we know and don’t know keeps changing. Given everything we know and don’t know about science, about God, about politics and about religion – what is the best answer we can give today?
What kind of an answer do people expect? In almost all cases, when people ask about the meaning of life, they expect to be told a story. Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal, that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about and what is my particular role in the cosmic drama. This role defines who I am, and gives meaning to all my experiences and choices.
One popular story, told for thousands of years to billions of anxious humans, explains that we are all part of an eternal cycle that encompasses and connects all beings. Each being has a distinctive function to fulfil in the cycle. To understand the meaning of life means to understand your unique function, and to live a good life means to accomplish that function.
”
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Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
To tighten the synergy between beliefs and rituals, the gods evolved desires and commandments that motivated people to participate in rituals, stick to fasts, maintain taboos, and make credible vows. The new doctrinal rituals more effectively transmit the faith, and, in turn, the new faith motivates the reinforcing rituals through the threat of supernatural punishment. This interlocking cycle helps perpetuate the faith from one generation to the next.50
”
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Joseph Henrich (The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous)
“
In order to live on this Earth together in harmony, humanity must make certain compromises to relate to each other. Everyone must make the necessary adaptations at some point in their lives—as children, they must adapt to their guardians; as adults, to their authorities and governments; and as elderly persons, to their caretakers. Those at the top now may not be there one day, and those at the bottom now could eventually rise to the top. Life is a cycle.
”
”
Cate East (Generational Astrology: How Astrology Can Crack the Millennial Code)
“
In my years as a detective and particularly with Searchlight, I’ve learned so much about cycles of violence in family systems. But cycles of silence can be just as dangerous—and they repeat through generations with startling consistency. A mother’s dieting becomes her daughter’s obsessive control over bonsai trees. Secret glaring infidelity becomes wordless assent and then emptiness. Cameron was exposed to all of this. Silver spoon or no, Emily had fed her powerlessness.
”
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Paula McLain (When the Stars Go Dark)
“
Even now I wonder if it was my poor sense of self that first generated my poor sense of my people. Or was it my poor sense of my people that inflamed a poor sense of myself? Like the famous question about the chicken and the egg, the answer is less important than the cycle it describes. Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas. Racist ideas make White people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
“
We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.
”
”
Amy Harmon (What the Wind Knows)
“
For thousands of generations, humans have lived the same sort of life cycle over and over: we’re born, we control a fragile body, we enjoy a small strip of sensory reality, and then we die. Science may give us the tools to transcend that evolutionary story. We can now hack our own hardware, and as a result our brains don’t need to remain as we’ve inherited them. We’re capable of inhabiting new kinds of sensory realities and new kinds of bodies. Eventually we may even be able to shed our physical forms altogether.
”
”
David Eagleman (The Brain: The Story of You)
“
They were planning some sort of real estate development on the edge of the city—probably on that few acres of pasture out back of the Waterhouse residence. They would put up town-houses around the edges, make the center into a square, and along the square Sterling would put up shops. Rich people would move in, and the Waterhouses and their confederates would control a patch of land that would probably generate more rent than any thousand square miles of Ireland—basically, they would become farmers of rich people.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle #1))
“
It’s so that she doesn’t compete with her children for food,” said Christina. “Or eat them by mistake. Or otherwise get in the way of progress. It’s common enough, in nature, this stepping aside after reproducing. The parents have had their turn, they’ve lived their lives, and their death gives the next generation a fighting chance to survive. The hatchlings have everything they need by that point. The lessons of the past are in them already. It’s time for their stories to begin, unencumbered by guilt or duty or expectations.
”
”
Emma Knight (The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus)
“
the Bible, in Numbers 14:18, appears to corroborate the claims of modern science—or vice versa—that the sins, iniquities, or consequences (depending on which translation you read) of the parents can affect the children up to the third and fourth generations. Specifically, the New Living Translation states: “The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. He lays the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations.
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
One of my main fears during the Trump administration was that Trumpism would outlast Trump. Frankenstein's monster had escaped the lab and turned on its masters. Hate and fear still sell. They work. They feed a 24/7 news cycle. They prey on rage and pain and ignorance and loss. They have a fertile playground. All hate needs is a new host, a new avatar, someone who is more polished, more competent, less prone to gaffes, and not compromised by debt or self-destructive tendencies.
We all have to rise up together and stop this because it will affect our present and future generations.
”
”
Wajahat Ali (Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American)
“
When the same or closely similar circumstances occur again, sometimes in only a few years, they are hailed by a new, often youthful, and always supremely self-confident generation as a brilliantly innovative discovery in the financial and larger economic world. There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present. (A Short History of Financial Euphoria, 1990)
”
”
Howard Marks (Mastering The Market Cycle: Getting the odds on your side)
“
The world of "becoming" is thus, in a manner of speaking, the truth Buddhism uses from the start. In the becoming nothing remains identical, there is nothing substantial, and nothing permanent. It is the becoming of experience itself, consuming itself in its own momentary content. Ceaseless and limitless, it is also conceived as nothing more than a succession of states that give place one to another according to an impersonal law, as in an eternal circle. We can here see an exact parallel of the Hellenic concept of the "cycle of generation" kύkλoς τς γενέσεως, and the "wheel of necessity," κύκλoς τς εἱμαρμένης.
”
”
Julius Evola (The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts)
“
The human brain operates on very low frequencies. For example when we're thinking actively we're generating 13 or 14 cycles per second, when we're meditating we're generating 8 cycles per second, and when we're asleep the brain waves are generating about 4 cycles per second. And HAARP is capable of generating all of these frequencies. These kinds of signals can control the human brain, and if you can control these frequencies and multiples of these frequencies and various combinations, you can control all kinds of emotions. You can generate happiness, you can generate sadness, you can generate any mood you want.
”
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Patrick Flanagan
“
That Generate Core Language What was taking place in your life when your symptom or problem first appeared? What was going on right before it started? What age were you when the symptom or problem first appeared? Did something traumatic happen to someone in your family at a similar age? What exactly happens in the problem? What does it feel like in its worst moments? What happens right before you feel this way or have the symptom? What makes it better or worse? What does the problem or symptom keep you from being able to do? What does it force you to do? If the feeling or symptom were never to go away, what would be the worst
”
”
Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
Every new generation of women, it seems, feminist and housewife alike, is encouraged by popular culture to disavow its forebears and rebrand itself as an all-new, never-before-seen generational phenomenon, completely different in every way from what came before. The 'housewives' of the 1970s gave way to the Martha Stewart 'homemakers' of the 1980s, then the 'soccer moms' of the 1990s, then the stay-at-home moms of the 2000s. Next may come the homeschooling homesteaders of the impending post-apocalypse - who knows? What's significant is that the cycle of idealization, devaluation, and revision gives an appearance of progress, of superficial change, that distracts us from the big picture.
”
”
Carina Chocano (You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages)
“
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.
For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.
All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)
“
If poverty leads to health disparities, then the story is that people should work harder to escape the cycle of generational poverty. On the other hand, suppose systemic oppression is the cause of health disparities, in that case, all signs point to a deeper level of work needing to be done by the dominant social group. Who can monitize that? Why would a self-absorbed, dominant cultural group want to do the work? In contrast, helping people suffering from poor health outcomes brought on by chronic stress is very lucrative. Millions of dollars earmarked for minority health promotion are awarded to nonprofits every year. Simultaneously, minority let nonprofits are consistently aborted less funding.
”
”
Dalia Kinsey (Decolonizing Wellness)
“
All this furious activity exacts a series of silent costs: less capacity for focused attention, less time for any given task, and less opportunity to think reflectively and long term. When we finally do get home at night, we have less energy for our families, less time to wind down and relax, and fewer hours to sleep. We return to work each morning feeling less rested, less than fully engaged, and less able to focus. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. Even for those who still manage to perform at high levels, there is a cost in overall satisfaction and fulfillment. The ethic of more, bigger, faster generates value that is narrow, shallow, and short term. More and more, paradoxically, leads to less and less.
”
”
Tony Schwartz (The Way We're Working Isn't Working)
“
Many of us from dysfunctional families are struggling. We need more help, it takes a village and we're trying to find ours. We are looking to family and possibly some friends who are still displaying destructive patterns of behavior that we don't want passed on to our children.
How do we break the cycle?
It starts with us, we have to create new circles and change the people we surround ourselves with.
It's not easy letting go but necessary for our personal growth and well being, as well as generations to come. Our children will embrace what we accept as the norm because they are looking
to us for guidance and direction. We set the tone for what's okay acceptable and unacceptable.
We are the leaders and they will follow suit.
”
”
Tanesia Harris
“
Free and accessible child care has always been a fundamental demand of the women’s movement, but the legislative efforts to pass such measures have failed. “Everything that our generation asked for as feminists was getting the identical things of what boys had—access to the Ivy League or professional schools or corporate America,” said psychiatrist Anna Fels. “Women now are up against a much deeper structural problem. The workplace is designed around the male life cycle and there is no allowance for children and family. There’s a fragile new cultural ideal—that both the husband and wife work. But when these families are under the real pressure of having a baby or two, there’s a collapse back to old cultural norms and these young parents go back to the default tradition.
”
”
Lynn Povich (The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace)
“
Aristotle was wrong in his partitioning of male and female contributions into "material" and "message," but abstractly, he had captured one of the essential truths about the nature of heredity. The transmission of heredity, as Aristotle perceived it, was essentially the transmission of information. Information was then used to build an organism from scratch: message became material. And when an organism matured, it generated male or female semen again-transforming material back to message. In fact, rather than Pythagoras's triangle, there was a circle, or a cycle, at work: form begat information, and then information begat form. Centuries later, the biologist Max Delbruck would joke that Aristotle should have been given the Nobel Prize posthumously-for the discovery of DNA.
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
“
[...] the argument that rape - by violence or deception - is a good method to ensure the survival of the human species has never been convincing. Women, like men, are born with a biological imperative to procreate and they are instinctively equipped to choose males that have a chance of producing the fittest offspring, either due to superior / compatible genetics or a willingness to help raise the young. Taking this choice away from a woman undermines the basic process of mate selection and ultimately works against the survival of the species. Selfish males who sexually coerce women seldom make good fathers and providers. Their violence, neglect, and abandonment creates significant psychological and physical trauma, which is passed on to the next generation, creating a cycle of despair and destructiveness.
”
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Isidora Sanger (Born in the Right Body: Gender Identity Ideology From a Medical and Feminist Perspective)
“
were portrayed by most historians as an almost static component of U.S. society. Their leaders changed with each generation, but the mass of black Americans were depicted as if the freed slaves of 1863 were the same people still not free fifty years later. There was no acknowledgment of the effects of cycle upon cycle of malevolent defeat, of the injury of seeing one generation rise above the cusp of poverty only to be indignantly crushed, of the impact of repeating tsunamis of violence and obliterated opportunities on each new generation of an ever-changing population outnumbered in persons and resources. Yet in the attics and basements of courthouses, old county jails, storage sheds, and local historical societies, I found a vast record of original documents and personal narratives revealing a very different version of events.
”
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Douglas A. Blackmon (Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II)
“
Humans tend to segregate the world: enemies on one side, friends on the other. Friends are people we know. Enemies are the Other. You can do just about anything to the Other. It doesn’t matter if this Other is actually guilty of any crimes, because it’s a matter of emotion, not logic. You see, angry people aren’t interested in justice. They just want an excuse to vent their rage.” Doolittle sighed. “And once you become their Other, you’re no longer a person. You’re just an idea, an abstraction of everything that’s wrong with their world. Give them the slightest excuse, and they will tear you down. And the easiest way for them to target you as this Other is to find something that’s different about you. Color of your skin. The way you speak. The place you’re from. Magic. It comes and goes in cycles, Kate. Each new generation picks their own Other.
”
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Ilona Andrews (Magic Slays (Kate Daniels, #5))
“
No direct evidence yet documents Earth’s tidal cycles more than a billion years ago, but we can be confident that 4.5 billion years ago things were a lot wilder. Not only did Earth have five-hour days, but the nearby Moon was much, much faster in its close orbit, as well. The Moon took only eighty-four hours—three and a half modern days—to go around Earth. With Earth spinning so fast and the Moon orbiting so fast, the familiar cycle of new Moon, waxing Moon, full Moon, and waning Moon played out in frenetic fast-forward: every few five-hour days saw a new lunar phase. Lots of consequences follow from this truth, some less benign than others. With such a big lunar obstruction in the sky and such rapid orbital motions, eclipses would have been frequent events. A total solar eclipse would have occurred every eighty-four hours at virtually every new Moon, when the Moon was positioned between Earth and the Sun. For some few minutes, sunlight would have been completely blocked, while the stars and planets suddenly popped out against a black sky, and the Moon’s fiery volcanoes and magma oceans stood out starkly red against the black lunar disk. Total lunar eclipses occurred regularly as well, almost every forty-two hours later, like clockwork. During every full Moon, when Earth lies right between the Sun and the Moon, Earth’s big shadow would have completely obscured the giant face of the bright shining Moon. Once again the stars and planets would have suddenly popped out against a black sky, as the Moon’s volcanoes put on their ruddy show. Monster tides were a far more violent consequence of the Moon’s initial proximity. Had both Earth and the Moon been perfectly rigid solid bodies, they would appear today much as they did 4.5 billion years ago: 15,000 miles apart with rapid rotational and orbital motions and frequent eclipses. But Earth and the Moon are not rigid. Their rocks can flex and bend; especially when molten, they swell and recede with the tides. The young Moon, at a distance of 15,000 miles, exerted tremendous tidal forces on Earth’s rocks, even as Earth exerted an equal and opposite gravitational force on the largely molten lunar landscape. It’s difficult to imagine the immense magma tides that resulted. Every few hours Earth’s largely molten rocky surface may have bulged a mile or more outward toward the Moon, generating tremendous internal friction, adding more heat and thus keeping the surface molten far longer than on an isolated planet. And Earth’s gravity returned the favor, bulging the Earth-facing side of the Moon outward, deforming our satellite out of perfect roundness.
”
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Robert M. Hazen (The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet)
“
To make matters worse, Unit 4 was at the end of a fuel cycle. One of the features of the RBMK design is ‘online refuelling’, which is the ability to swap out spent fuel while the reactor is at power. Because fuel burn-up is not even throughout the core, it was not uncommon for the reactor to contain both new and old fuel, which was usually replaced every two years. On April 26th, around 75% of the fuel was nearing the end of its cycle.95 This old fuel had, by now, been given time to accumulate hot and highly radioactive fission products, meaning any interruption in the flow of cooling water could quickly damage the older fuel channels and generate heat faster than the reactor was designed to cope with. Unit 4 was scheduled for a lengthy shutdown and annual maintenance period upon conclusion of the test, during which all of the old fuel would be replaced. It would have been far more sensible to conduct the test with fresh fuel, but management decided to push ahead anyway.
”
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Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
“
Welfare was taking away the very thing that people needed most—the initiative to provide for themselves. At the same time it was undermining the family: Teenagers from the inner cities, who for various reasons decided they didn’t want to live at home anymore, discovered that by getting pregnant—they didn’t even have to wait for their baby to be born—they got a welfare check that allowed them to rent their own apartment, and they discovered they could increase their monthly welfare check any time they chose simply by getting pregnant again. Meanwhile, the father of the child might have a good job and want to live with his family. But he was told his family was better off financially if he walked out on them; if he stayed, they wouldn’t get a welfare check. Not only was the welfare program a tax-financed incentive for immorality that was destroying the family, it was responsible for an endless and malignant cycle of despair in which generation after generation went on the dole and never had any incentive to leave it.
”
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Ronald Reagan (An American Life: The Autobiography)
“
In a study involving the offspring of stressed male mice conducted at Emory University School of Medicine in 2013, researchers discovered that traumatic memories could be passed down to subsequent generations through epigenetic changes that occur in DNA. Mice in one generation were trained to fear a cherry blossom–like scent called acetophenone. Each time they were exposed to the smell, they simultaneously received an electric shock. After a while, the shocked mice had a greater amount of smell receptors associated with that particular scent, enabling them to detect it at lower concentrations. They also had enlarged brain areas devoted to those receptors. Researchers were also able to identify changes in the mice’s sperm. The most intriguing aspect of the study is what occurred in the next two generations. Both the pups and grandpups, when exposed to the blossom odor, became jumpy and avoided it, despite never having experienced it before. They also exhibited the same brain changes. The mice appeared to inherit not only the sensitivity to the scent, but also the fear response associated with it.64
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Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
“
The last statement reveals more than may appear at first glance: it indicates that Greenspan's mistake was to expect that the lending institutions' enlightened self-interest would make them act more responsibly, more ethically, in order to avoid short-term self-propelling cycles of wild speculation which, sooner or later, burst like a bubble. In other words, his mistake concerned not the facts, the objective economic data or mechanisms; it concerned rather the ethical attitudes generated by market speculation—in particular the premise that market processes will spontaneously generate responsibility and trust, since it is in the long-term self-interest of the participants themselves to act thusly. Clearly, Greenspan's error was not only and not simply one of overestimating the rationality of market agents—that is, their ability to resist the temptation of making wild speculative gains. What he forgot to include in the equation was the financial speculators' quite rational expectation that the risks would be worth taking, since, in the event of a financial collapse, they could count on the state to cover their losses.
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Slavoj Žižek (First as Tragedy, Then as Farce)
“
The Golden Bough captured the imagination of many artists in the early twentieth century. Eliot, certainly, was immersed in it, discussing it familiarly in his graduate school papers and book reviews and constantly alluding to it in his art. The most straightforward advice he offers to readers of The Waste Land (given in the notes to the poem) is, in paraphrase, that any serious reader of the poem must take into consideration modern scholarship in myth and anthropology, especially Frazer Golden Bough and Jessie Weston From Ritual to Romance. The poet says that he is indebted to this scholarship for his title, his plan, his symbolism, and many of his references to ancient religion and society. His claim about the title, taken from the monomyth of Frazer and Weston, his claim about the symbolism, associated with the birth-death-rebirth cycles of the myths, and his claim about the miscellaneous undergirding references have been discussed by Grover Smith and other scholars. We wish to focus more on Eliot's claim about being indebted to Frazer for the plan of the poem. We believe it refers, at least in part, to Frazer's use of the comparative method and to his practice of assembling many perspectives and allowing these perspectives to make his point.
It must be noted at once that Eliot was quite selective in his admiration of Frazer. For example, he did not admire Frazer's positivism. Frazer put his faith in science and celebrated what he called the evolution from magic to religion to science. Nor did Eliot share Frazer's conclusions. In his 1913 paper on the interpretation of primitive ritual, he says that Frazer's interpretations of specific myths (the myth of the dying god is his example) are almost certainly mistaken. But Eliot did admire Frazer's erudition and his increasingly nontheoretical presentation of many angles of vision which in themselves tend to generate an overarching abstract primitive vision. In 1924, on the occasion of the publication of a condensed edition of The Golden Bough, Eliot wrote a review in which he lauded Frazer for having "extended the consciousness of the human mind into as dark a backward and abysm of time as has yet been explored." Eliot argues that Frazer's importance for artists is in his exemplary withdrawal from speculation, his adoption of the absence of interpretation as a positive modus operandi.
”
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Jewel Spears Brooker (Reading the Waste Land: Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation)
“
They were able to step back from their automatic responses and glimpse the full scope of existence. Life, they knew, endured through the cycles of the sun and moon and seasons, but as the dead around them attested, it also had an end. What was the purpose? Looking closely at these reflective individuals, I realized I could perceive their Birth Visions; they had come into the Earthly dimension with the specific purpose of initiating humanity’s first existential awakening. And, even though I couldn’t see its full scope, I knew that in the back of their minds was held the larger inspiration of the World Vision. Before their birth, they were aware that humanity was embarking on a long journey that they could already see. But they also knew that progress along this journey would have to be earned, generation by generation—for as we awakened to pursue a higher destiny, we also lost the calm peace of unconsciousness. Along with the exhilaration and freedom of knowing we were alive came the fear and uncertainty of being alive without knowing why. I could see that humanity’s long history would be moved by these two conflicting urges. On the one hand, we would be moved past our fears by the strength of our intuitions, by our mental images that life was about accomplishing some particular goal, of moving culture forward in a positive direction that only we, as individuals, acting with courage and wisdom, could inspire. From the strength of these feelings we would be reminded that, as insecure as life appeared, we were, in fact, not alone, that there was purpose and meaning underlying the mystery of existence. Yet, on the other hand, we would often fall prey to the opposite urge, the urge to protect ourselves from the Fear, at times losing sight of the purpose, falling into the angst of separation and abandonment. This Fear would lead us into a frightened self-protection, fighting to retain our positions of power, stealing energy from each other, and always resisting change and evolution, regardless of what new, better information might be available. As the awakening continued, millennia passed, and I watched as humans gradually began to coalesce into ever-larger groups, following a natural drive to identify with more people, to move into more complex social organizations. I could see that this drive came from the vague intuition, known fully in the Afterlife, that human destiny on Earth was to evolve toward unification.
”
”
James Redfield (The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (Celestine Prophecy #2))
“
AS ALL-CONSUMING AS the economic crisis was, my fledgling administration didn’t have the luxury of putting everything else on hold, for the machinery of the federal government stretched across the globe, churning every minute of every day, indifferent to overstuffed in-boxes and human sleep cycles. Many of its functions (generating Social Security checks, keeping weather satellites aloft, processing agricultural loans, issuing passports) required no specific instructions from the White House, operating much like a human body breathes or sweats, outside the brain’s conscious control. But this still left countless agencies and buildings full of people in need of our daily attention: looking for policy guidance or help with staffing, seeking advice because some internal breakdown or external event had thrown the system for a loop. After our first weekly Oval Office meeting, I asked Bob Gates, who’d served under seven previous presidents, for any advice he might have in managing the executive branch. He gave me one of his wry, crinkly smiles. “There’s only one thing you can count on, Mr. President,” he said. “On any given moment in any given day, somebody somewhere is screwing up.” We went to work trying to minimize screw-ups.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
Six million women were abused in 1991. One in every six was pregnant."
--- Sally Jessy Raphael
Abuse against women is more than a crime of violence. It is a statement about society's view of women and itself. Women have been viewed as property, tools of pleasure, and underlings. The people who support these views forget that women are the mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, and nieces who raise the fathers, sons, uncles, brothers, and nephews. Women are the creative force of the world. The world's treatment of women will be reflected in the things men create. Every man of color has an ancestral obligation to get clear regarding his views about women. Childhood pains, adolescent disappointments, adult misconceptions must be mended and forgiven. Every woman of color has a responsibility to all women of color to reveal the violence against her, to heal her wounds, and do everything in her power to make sure another woman is healed."
Mantra: I Am every woman;
Reflection: Consider the women in your life who have been victims of physical or sexual abuse. What can you do today to help one woman heal or to end the painful cycle for future generations?
----Iyanla Vanzant,
from Acts of Faith: Daily Meditations for People of Color
”
”
Iyanla Vanzant (Acts of Faith: Daily Meditations for People of Color)
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Because of the extreme heat fission generates, the reactor core must be kept cool at all costs. This is particularly important with an RBMK, which operates at an, “astonishingly high temperature,” relative to other reactor types, of 500°C with hotspots of up to 700°C, according to British nuclear expert Dr. Eric Voice. A typical PWR has an operating temperature of about 275°C. A few different kinds of coolant are used in different reactors, from gas to air to liquid metal to salt, but Chernobyl’s uses the same as most other reactors: light water, meaning it is just regular water. The plant was originally going to be fitted with gas-cooled reactors, but this was eventually changed because of a shortage of the necessary equipment.75 Water is pumped into the bottom of the reactor at high pressure (1000psi, or 65 atmospheres), where it boils and passes up, out of the reactor and through a condensator that separates steam from water. All remaining water is pushed through another pump and fed back into the reactor. The steam, meanwhile, enters a steam turbine, which turns and generates electricity. Each RBMK reactor produces 5,800 tons of steam per hour.76 Having passed through this turbogenerator, the steam is condensed back into water and fed back to the pumps, where it begins its cycle again.
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Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
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The movement actually managed to succeed in lobbying for the passage of involuntary sterilization laws in thirty American states. This meant that the state could neuter people who fell below a particular IQ without their having any say in the matter. That each state eventually repealed the laws is a testament to common sense and compassion. That the laws existed in the first place is a frightening indication of how dangerously limited any standardized test is in calculating intelligence and the capacity to contribute to society. IQ tests can even be a matter of life and death. A criminal who commits a capital offense is not subject to the death penalty if his IQ is below seventy. However, IQ scores regularly rise over the course of a generation (by as much as twenty-five points), causing the scale to be reset every fifteen to twenty years to maintain a mean score of one hundred. Therefore, someone who commits a capital offense may be more likely to be put to death at the beginning of a cycle than at the end. That’s giving a single test an awful lot of responsibility. People can also improve their scores through study and practice. I read a case recently about a death row inmate who’d at that point spent ten years in jail on a life sentence (he wasn’t the trigger man, but he’d been involved in a robbery where someone died). During his incarceration, he took a series of courses. When retested, his IQ had risen more than ten points—suddenly making him eligible for execution.
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Ken Robinson (The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)
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The earth is our first and most foundational relationship of nurturance, anchorage, and agency that secures livelihood forward. Earth is our first mother—the generous lifeline every human and nonhuman on this planet shares in common without exception. Our relationship with the earth is a material, unwavering truth that determines our fundamental existence on this planet. In separating us from this relationship or reconfiguring and exploiting it on the occupiers’ terms, colonialism interrupts our deeper contract as sacred living beings of a sacred living planet, and the practical ways we have evolved to navigate and mutually sustain life. It fractures our sovereignty in a multifaceted way. We are the earth. An embodied relationship with the land imbues innate reverence for life, an embedded knowledge of its inherent dignity. We understand all beings have a consciousness, and we are a fundamental part of the ecosystem. It teaches us how to steward life and land, through intimacy with its natural cycles. Our specific landscapes have sustained our bodies and provided for our societies generationally; they have also informed every aspect of our social structures, inspired our ancestral cosmologies, narrated our stories, animated our foods and agricultural practices, intonated our languages and the rhythms of our songs, revealed our gods, and inspired every aspect of our relationships, rituals, beliefs, and identities. These places have guided every aspect of our self-determined livelihoods and cultural formation, including our understanding of ourselves and each other in the universe.
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Layla K. Feghali (The Land in Our Bones)
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When we reflect on our daily lives, we might look back at a day that was very stressful and think, “Well, that wasn’t my favorite day this week.” When you’re in the middle of one of those days, you might long for a day with less stress in it. But if you put a wider lens on your life and subtract every day that you have experienced as stressful, you won’t find yourself with an ideal life. Instead, you’ll find yourself also subtracting the experiences that have helped you grow, the challenges you are most proud of, and the relationships that define you. You may have spared yourself some discomfort, but you will also have robbed yourself of some meaning.
And yet, it’s not at all uncommon to wish for a life without stress. While this is a natural desire, pursuing it comes at a heavy cost. In fact, many of the negative outcomes we associate with stress may actually be the consequence of trying to avoid it. Psychologists have found that trying to avoid stress leads to a significantly reduced sense of well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness. Avoiding stress can also be isolating. In a study of students at Doshisha University in Japan, the goal to avoid stress predicted a drop, over time, in their sense of connection and belonging. Having such a goal can even exhaust you. For example, researchers at the University of Zurich asked students about their goals, then tracked them for one month. Across two typically stressful periods—end-of-semester exams and the winter holidays—those with the strongest desire to avoid stress were the most likely to report declines in concentration, physical energy, and self-control.
One particularly impressive study conducted through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in Palo Alto, California, followed more than one thousand adults for ten years. At the beginning of the study, researchers asked the participants about how they dealt with stress. Those who reported trying to avoid stress were more likely to become depressed over the following decade. They also experienced increasing conflict at work and at home, and more negative outcomes, such as being fired or getting divorced. Importantly, avoiding stress predicted the increase in depression, conflict, and negative events above and beyond any symptoms or difficulties reported at the beginning of the study. Wherever a participant started in life, the tendency to avoid stress made things worse over the next decade.
Psychologists call this vicious cycle stress generation. It’s the ironic consequence of trying to avoid stress: You end up creating more sources of stress while depleting the resources that should be supporting you. As the stress piles up, you become increasingly overwhelmed and isolated, and therefore even more likely to rely on avoidant coping strategies, like trying to steer clear of stressful situations or to escape your feelings with self-destructive distractions. The more firmly committed you are to avoiding stress, the more likely you are to find yourself in this downward spiral. As psychologists Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci write in The Exploration of Happiness, “The more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce instead a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community.
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Kelly McGonigal (The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It)
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Women discharge roughly 35 percent of sperm within 30 minutes of the time of insemination, averaged across all instances of intercourse. If the woman has an orgasm, however, she retains 70 percent of the sperm, ejecting only 30 percent. This 5 percent difference is not large, but if it occurred repeatedly, in woman after woman, generation after generation, it could add up to a large selection pressure over evolutionary time. Lack of an orgasm leads to the ejection of more sperm. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that a woman’s orgasm functions to draw the sperm from the vagina into the cervical canal and uterus, increasing the probability of conception (Puts et al., 2012). The number of sperm a woman retains is also linked with whether she is having an affair. Women time their adulterous liaisons in a way that is reproductively detrimental to their husbands. In a nationwide sex survey of 3,679 women in Britain, all women recorded their menstrual cycles as well as the timing of their copulations with their husbands and, if they were having affairs, with their lovers. It turned out that women having affairs time their copulations, most likely unconsciously, to coincide with the point in their menstrual cycle when they were most likely to be ovulating and hence were most likely to conceive (Baker & Bellis, 1995). Furthermore, women who are having affairs are more likely to be orgasmic with their affair partner than with their regular partner (Buss, 2016 b). Other studies find that women are especially likely to experience sexual orgasm with men who are masculine and physically attractive—qualities women typically desire in short-term mating (Puts, Welling, Burriss, & Dawood, 2012).
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David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
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Stage 2: People and Their Countries Are Rich but Still Think of Themselves as Poor. Because people who grew up with financial insecurity typically don’t lose their financial cautiousness, people in this stage still work hard, sell a lot to foreigners, have pegged exchange rates, save a lot, and invest efficiently in real assets like real estate, gold, and local bank deposits, and in bonds of the reserve currency countries. Because they have a lot more money, they can and do invest in the things that make them more productive—e.g., human capital development, infrastructure, research and development, etc. This generation of parents wants to educate their children well and get them to work hard to be successful. They also improve their resource-allocation systems, including their capital markets and their legal systems. This is the most productive phase of the cycle. Countries in this stage experience rapidly rising income growth and rapidly rising productivity growth at the same time. The productivity growth means two things: 1) inflation is not a problem and 2) the country can become more competitive. During this stage, debts typically do not rise significantly relative to incomes and sometimes they decline. This is a very healthy period and a terrific time to invest in a country if it has adequate property rights protections. You can tell countries in this stage from those in the first stage because they have gleaming new cities next to old ones, high savings rates, rapidly rising incomes, and, typically, rising foreign exchange reserves. I call countries in this stage “late-stage emerging countries.” While countries of all sizes can go through this stage, when big countries go through it, they are typically emerging into great world powers.
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Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail)
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Given this new theory of mental illness, we can now apply it to various forms of mental disorders, summarizing the previous discussion in this new light. We saw earlier that the obsessive behavior of people suffering from OCD might arise when the checks and balances between several feedback loops are thrown out of balance: one registering something as amiss, another carrying out corrective action, and another one signaling that the matter has been taken care of. The failure of the checks and balances within this loop can cause the brain to be locked into a vicious cycle, so the mind never believes that the problem has been resolved. The voices heard by schizophrenics might arise when several feedback loops are no longer balancing one another. One feedback loop generates spurious voices in the temporal cortex (i.e., the brain is talking to itself). Auditory and visual hallucinations are often checked by the anterior cingulate cortex, so a normal person can differentiate between real and fictitious voices. But if this region of the brain is not working properly, the brain is flooded with disembodied voices that it believes are real. This can cause schizophrenic behavior. Similarly, the manic-depressive swings of someone with bipolar disorder might be traced to an imbalance between the left and right hemispheres. The necessary interplay between optimistic and pessimistic assessments is thrown off balance, and the person oscillates wildly between these two diverging moods. Paranoia may also be viewed in this light. It results from an imbalance between the amygdala (which registers fear and exaggerates threats) and the prefrontal cortex, which evaluates these threats and puts them into perspective. We should also stress that evolution has given us these feedback loops for a reason: to protect us. They keep us clean, healthy, and socially connected. The problem occurs when the dynamic between opposing feedback loops is disrupted.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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Was that not the effect behind my daily reading of the paper? In their businesses and politics, their taverns, movies, assaults, divorces, murders, I tried continually to find clear signs of their common humanity. It was undeniably to, my interest to do this. Because I was involved with them; because, whether I liked it or not, they were my generation, my society, my world. We were figures in the same plot, eternally fixed together. I was aware, also, that their existence, just as it was, made mine possible. And if, as was often said, this part of the century was approaching the nether curve in a cycle, then I, too, would remain on the bottom and there, extinct, merely add my body, my life, to the base of a coming time. This would probably be a condemned age. But... it might be a mistake to think of it in that way. Mists faded and spread and faded on the pane as I breathed. Perhaps a mistake. And when I thought of the condemned ages and those unnamed, lying in their obscurity, I wondered. How did we know how it was? In all principal ways the human spirit must have been the same. Good apparently left fewer traces. And we were coming to know that we had misjudged whole epochs. Besides, the giants of the last century had their Liverpools and Londons, their Lilles and Hamburgs to contend against, as we have our Chicagos and Detroits. And there might be a chance that I was misled, even with these ruins before my eyes, sodden, themselves the color of the fateful paper that I read daily. I have spoken of an "invariable question." But the fact is that it had for many months been not in the least invariable. These were things I would have thought last winter, and now, in their troubled density, they served only to remind me of the sort of person I had been. For a long time "common humanity" and "bring myself to concede" had been completely absent from my mind. And all at once I saw how I had lapsed from that older self to whom they had been so natural.
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Saul Bellow (Dangling Man)
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The Spark, the animating spirit of the early warrior caste, is distinct from the religion that comes to predominate and maintain the later multiethnic empire, which I will call The Imperial Altar. Civilisational successes—such as conquest, wealth, and education—generate their own loss conditions. The Barbarism of Reflection destroys the foundations of the Imperial Altar and successfully kills any last remnants of The Spark. The castes of the lion archetype (warriors and peasants) have mutual antagonisms with the castes of the fox archetype (priests or intellectuals and merchants). Where the lion archetype predominates either as monarchism (warriors) or as Caesarism (peasants) ‘civilisational successes’ can be held in check for a period. They tend to create strong regimes through ruthlessness but such strength, ironically, leads to the managerial need for administration generated by growth and complexity, which in turn leads to the rise of elites of the fox archetype taking over. When the fox archetype predominates, either as theocracy (priests/intellectuals) or plutarchy (merchants), ‘civilisational success’ may accelerate but, in the process, the very foundations that facilitated such success in the first place (i.e. the strong regime maintained by the lion’s ruthlessness) are eroded, eventually leading to collapse. Quantity has a quality all of its own, which manifests as all that is ‘mass’: democracy, utilitarianism, standardisation, and the destruction of quality and distinction. This is a feature of the late, pre-collapse cycle. Individuals of one civilisational season cannot embody the spirit of another: the Children of Winter, for example, cannot embody the Spring. Civilisation is incommunicable. The ‘world-feeling’ of a people as Spengler says is ‘not transferable’. ‘What one people takes over from another—in “conversion” or in admiring feeling—is a name, dress, and mask for its own feeling, never the feeling of that other.’[1] Ethnicity is a constant reality which promotes ingroup solidarity in the early cycle and becomes a problem for the ruling class to manage in the late cycle.
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Neema Parvini (The Prophets of Doom)
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Cultures are always built by the telling of stories. Within them are contained symbols and values that can be passed easily through the generations. Thousands of goddess tales are being unearthed and retold, and many new ones are being created. These tales are like threads with which we can weave our magic. In many stories the goddess is described in three phases—the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. This is a wonderful female trinity with infinite correspondences in life and nature. Cycles Three, Four, and Five will deal with each of these goddess-phases in turn.
Some of the old goddess tales were twisted to suit the takeover of male powers, in order to win converts to their new gods. For example, Pandora (All-Gifts) was originally a Great Mother Goddess, whose box (womb, cauldron, cave, cup) was a reservoir of beauty and life-sustaining gifts. Patriarchal myth tells us that Her box contained all manner of destructive demons, which once unleashed upon the world, brought evil and suffering to all. Eve was also a Mother Goddess, whose tree was the Tree of Life. The serpent was her own sensual wisdom, and the apple was her sacred fruit. Athene, whom we are told was born fully grown out of the head of Zeus, dressed in armor and ready for war, was originally the daughter of the matriarchal goddess Metis. (Meter, method, measure, matter, mother…) Both mother and daughter were worshipped by the Amazons at Lake Triton, and were born parthenogenetically—without sperm. The examples of mythic misogyny are endless. Medusa is another; the patriarchs would have us believe that one look upon her face would turn the viewer to stone, because they did not wish us to know her true nature. One source reveals that the Medusae were a tribe of Amazon women; another that their snaky-haired masks were used over temple doorways to protect the Mysteries from irreverent intruders. Whenever we hear about a serpent in myth or fairy-tale, we can usually be sure that it hails back to an ancient Goddess and Her powers. The serpent, before the heyday of Freud and phallic symbols, meant transformation and kundalini energy.
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Shekhinah Mountainwater (Ariadne's Thread: A Workbook of Goddess Magic)
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Where else in dramatic literature is there such a treatment of the life-and-death cycle of people and political change? One needs to reach back to the chronicles of Shakespeare, back to the Greeks. Larry Kramer isn't Sophocles and he isn't Shakespeare; we don't have Sophocleses or Shakespeares, not these days, but we do have, on rare occasion, remarkable accomplishment, and Kramer's is remarkable, invaluable, and rare. How else to dramatise revolution accurately, truthfully, politically, than by showing it to be tragic as well as triumphant? And on the other hand, if the medical, biological, political, and familial failures of "Destiny" produce, by the play's end, despair again; if we are plunged back into night, it cannot be different from the night with which "Normal Heart" began, rife with despair and terror, and pregnant with an offstage potential for transformation, for hope. Failure awaits any political movement, even a spectacularly successful movement such as the one Larry Kramer helped to spark and organise. Political movements, liberation movements, revolutions, are as subject to time, decline, mortality, tragedy, as any human enterprise, or any human being. Death waits for every living thing, no matter how vital or brilliant its accomplishment; death waits for people and for their best and worst efforts as well.politics is a living thing, and living things die. The mistake is to imagine otherwise, to believe that progress doesn't generate as many new problems as it generates blessings, to imagine, foolishly, that the struggle can be won decisively, finally, definitively. No matter what any struggle accomplishes, time, life, death bring in their changes, and new oppressions are always forming from the ashes of the old. The fight for justice, for a better world, for civil rights or access to medicine, is a never-ending fight, at least as far as we have to see. the full blooded description of this truth, the recognition and dramatisation of a political cycle of birth, death, rebirth, defeat, renewal - this is true tragedy, in which absolute loss and devastation, Nothing is arrived at, and from this Nothing, something new is born.
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Tony Kushner (The Normal Heart & The Destiny of Me (two plays))
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I have come to think of the UFO problem in terms of three distinct levels.
The first level is physical. We now know that the UFO behaves like a region of space, of small dimensions (about ten meters), within which a very large amount of energy is stored. This energy is manifested by pulsed light phenomena of intense colors and by other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
The second level is biological. Reports of UFOs show all kinds of psychophysiological effects on the witnesses. Exposure to the phenomenon causes visions, hallucinations, space and time disorientation, physiological reactions (including temporary blindness, paralysis, sleep cycle changes), and long-term personality changes.
The third level is social. Belief in the reality of UFOs is spreading rapidly at all levels of society throughout the world. Books on the subject continue to accumulate. Documentaries and major films are being made by men and women who grew up with flying-saucer stories. Expectations about life in the universe have been revolutionized. Many modern themes in our culture can be traced back to the "messages from space" coming from UFO contactees of the forties and fifties.
The experience of a close encounter with a UFO is a shattering physical and mental ordeal. The trauma has effects that go far beyond what the witnesses recall consciously. New types of behavior are conditioned, and new types of beliefs are promoted. Aside from any scientific consideration, the social, political, and religious consequences of the experience are enormous if they are considered over the timespan of a generation.
Faced with the new wave of experiences of UFO contact that are described in books like Communion and Intruders and in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, our religions seem obsolete. Our idea of the church as a social entity working within rational structures is obviously challenged by the claim of a direct communication in modern times with visible beings who seem endowed with supernatural powers.
This idea can shake our society to the very roots of its culture. Witnesses are no longer afraid to come forward with personal stories of abductions, of spiritual exchanges with aliens, even of sexual interaction with them. Such reports are folklore in the making. I have discovered that they form a striking parallel to the tales of meetings with elves and jinn of medieval times, with the denizens of "Magonia," the land beyond the clouds of ancient chronicles. But they are something else, too: a portent of important things to come.
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Jacques F. Vallée (Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact)
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...the centrality of competitiveness as the key to growth is a recurrent EU motif. Two decades of EC directives on increasing competition in every area, from telecommunications to power generation to collateralizing wholesale funding markets for banks, all bear the same ordoliberal imprint. Similarly, the consistent focus on the periphery states’ loss of competitiveness and the need for deep wage and cost reductions therein, while the role of surplus countries in generating the crisis is utterly ignored, speaks to a deeply ordoliberal understanding of economic management. Savers, after all, cannot be sinners. Similarly, the most recent German innovation of a constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for all EU countries regardless of their business cycles or structural positions, coupled with a new rules-based fiscal treaty as the solution to the crisis, is simply an ever-tighter ordo by another name.
If states have broken the rules, the only possible policy is a diet of strict austerity to bring them back into conformity with the rules, plus automatic sanctions for those who cannot stay within the rules. There are no fallacies of composition, only good and bad policies. And since states, from an ordoliberal viewpoint, cannot be relied upon to provide the necessary austerity because they are prone to capture, we must have rules and an independent monetary authority to ensure that states conform to the ordo imperative; hence, the ECB. Then, and only then, will growth return. In the case of Greece and Italy in 2011, if that meant deposing a few democratically elected governments, then so be it.
The most remarkable thing about this ordoliberalization of Europe is how it replicates the same error often attributed to the Anglo-American economies: the insistence that all developing states follow their liberal instruction sheets to get rich, the so-called Washington Consensus approach to development that we shall discuss shortly. The basic objection made by late-developing states, such as the countries of East Asia, to the Washington Consensus/Anglo-American idea “liberalize and then growth follows” was twofold. First, this understanding mistakes the outcomes of growth, stable public finances, low inflation, cost competitiveness, and so on, for the causes of growth. Second, the liberal path to growth only makes sense if you are an early developer, since you have no competitors—pace the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century and the United States in the nineteenth century. Yet in the contemporary world, development is almost always state led.
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Mark Blyth (Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea)
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With the importance of resetting the entropy each time a steam engine goes through a cycle, you might wonder what would happen if the entropy reset were to fail. That’s tantamount to the steam engine not expelling adequate waste heat, and so with each cycle the engine would get hotter until it would overheat and break down. If a steam engine were to suffer such a fate it might prove inconvenient but, assuming there were no injuries, would likely not drive anyone into an existential crisis. Yet the very same physics is central to whether life and mind can persist indefinitely far into the future. The reason is that what holds for the steam engine holds for you.
It is likely that you don’t consider yourself to be a steam engine or perhaps even a physical contraption. I, too, only rarely use those terms to describe myself. But think about it: your life involves processes no less cyclical than those of the steam engine. Day after day, your body burns the food you eat and the air you breathe to provide energy for your internal workings and your external activities. Even the very act of thinking—molecular motion taking place in your brain—is powered by these energy-conversion processes. And so, much like the steam engine, you could not survive without resetting your entropy by purging excess waste heat to the environment. Indeed, that’s what you do. That’s what we all do. All the time. It’s why, for example, the military’s infrared goggles designed to “see” the heat we all continually expel do a good job of helping soldiers spot enemy combatants at night.
We can now appreciate more fully Russell’s mind-set when imagining the far future. We are all waging a relentless battle to resist the persistent accumulation of waste, the unstoppable rise of entropy. For us to survive, the environment must absorb and carry away all the waste, all the entropy, we generate. Which raises the question, Does the environment—by which we now mean the observable universe—provide a bottomless pit for absorbing such waste? Can life dance the entropic two-step indefinitely? Or might there come a time when the universe is, in effect, stuffed and so is unable to absorb the waste heat generated by the very activities that define us, bringing an end to life and mind? In the lachrymose phrasing of Russell, is it true that “all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins”?
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Brian Greene (Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe)
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[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void.
Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin."
Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget.
Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love."
Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands.
The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love.
The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva.
The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.
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Joseph Campbell
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Kemmer is not always played by pairs. Pairing seems to be the commonest custom, but in the kemmerhouses of towns and cities, groups may form and intercourse take place promiscuously among the males and females of the group. The furthest extreme from this practice is the custom of vowing kemmering (Karh. oskyommer), which is to all intents and purposes monogamous marriage. It has no legal status, but socially and ethically is an ancient and vigorous institution. The whole structure of the Karhidish Clan-Hearths and Domains is indubitably based upon the institution of monogamous marriage. I am not sure of divorce rules in general; here in Osnoriner there is divorce, but no remarriage after either divorce or the partner’s death: one can only vow kemmering once. Descent of course is reckoned, all over Gethen, from the mother, the “parent in the flesh” (Karh. amha). Incest is permitted, with various restrictions, between siblings, even the full siblings of a vowed-kemmering pair. Siblings are not however allowed to vow kemmering, nor keep kemmering after the birth of a child to one of the pair. Incest between generations is strictly forbidden (In Karhide/Orgoreyn; but is said to be permitted among the tribesmen of Perunter, the Antarctic Continent. This may be slander.). What else have I learned for certain? That seems to sum it up. There is one feature of this anomalous arrangement that might have adaptive value. Since coitus takes place only during the period of fertility, the chance of conception is high, as with all mammals that have an estrous cycle. In harsh conditions where infant mortality is great, a race survival value may be indicated. At present neither infant mortality nor the birthrate runs high in the civilized areas of Gethen. Tinibossol estimates a population of not over 100 million on the Three Continents, and considers it to have been stable for at least a millennium. Ritual and ethical absention and the use of contraceptive drugs seem to have played the major part in maintaining this stability. There are aspects of ambisexuality that we have only glimpsed or guessed at, and which we may never grasp entirely. The kemmer phenomenon fascinates all of us Investigators, of course. It fascinates us, but it rules the Gethenians, dominates them. The structure of their societies, the management of their industry, agriculture, commerce, the size of their settlements, the subjects of their stories, everything is shaped to fit the somer-kemmer cycle. Everybody has his holiday once a month; no one, whatever his position, is obliged or forced to work when in kemmer. No one is barred from the kemmerhouse, however poor or strange. Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion. This is easy for us to understand. What is very hard for us to understand is that, four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all. Room is made for sex, plenty of room; but a room, as it were, apart. The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and in its continuity, is without sex. Consider:
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
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Contributing to . . . euphoria are two further factors little noted in our time or in past times. The first is the extreme brevity of the financial memory. In consequence, financial disaster is quickly forgotten. In further consequence, when the same or closely similar circumstances occur again, sometimes in only a few years, they are hailed by a new, often youthful, and always supremely self-confident generation as a brilliantly innovative discovery in the financial and larger economic world. There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
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Howard Marks (Mastering The Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side)
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Most economic forecasts consist of extrapolations of current levels and long-term trends. And since the economy usually doesn’t depart much from those levels and trends, most extrapolation forecasts turn out to be correct. But those extrapolation forecasts are likely to be commonly shared, already reflected in the market prices for assets, and thus not generators of superior performance—even when they come true. Here’s how Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman put it:
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Howard Marks (Mastering The Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side)
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As early as 1793, a White minister protested that “a Negro hut” had depreciated property values in Salem. Similar protests surfaced in New Haven and Indiana, and they had become commonplace in Boston by the time Garrison settled there. The vicious housing cycle had already begun. Racist policies harmed Black neighborhoods, generating racist ideas that caused people not to want to live next to Blacks, which depressed the value of Black homes, which caused people not to want to live in Black neighborhoods even more, owing to low property values.
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Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
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Perhaps, if we parented our children in the manner we wished to be parented when we were kids, the world would be less neurotic. But what people tend to do is to replicate their parents' harsh disciplines or the society's skewed behaviours. This cycle negatively affects the development of children, and it continues in each generation.
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Mitta Xinindlu
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he manner we wished to be parented when we were kids, the world would be less neurotic. But what people tend to do is to replicate their parents' harsh discipline or the society's skewed behaviours. This cycle negatively affects the development of children, and it continues in each generation.
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Mitta Xinindlu
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Perhaps if we parented our children in the manner we wished to be parented when we were kids, the world would be less neurotic. But what people tend to do is to replicate their parents' harsh discipline or the society's skewed behaviours. This cycle negatively affects the development of children, and it continues in each generation.
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Mitta Xinindlu
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My model here projects an 83 percent crash in late 2022. That’s perfectly in line with my Generational Spending Wave turning up again longer-term in 2023. But most of the damage should be seen by early 2020, when my four fundamental cycles still point down together. I would expect the S&P 500 (and the Dow) to be down around 75 percent by then and down 83 percent by late 2022. To go back to the original bubble origin in late 1994, the S&P would have to fall to 450 and the Dow to 3,800 . . . Do you want to sit through that scenario?
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Harry S. Dent (Zero Hour: Turn the Greatest Political and Financial Upheaval in Modern History to Your Advantage)
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The Vicious Cycle of Accumulating Clutter
Research shows that clutter decreases the joy we feel at work for two main reasons. First, it overwhelms the brain. The more stuff we have around us, the more overloaded the brain becomes. This makes it harder for us to recognize, experience, and savor those things that are most important to us - the things that bring us joy.
Second, when we are inundated with things, information, and tasks, we lose our sense of control and the ability to choose. No longer capable of taking the initiative or choosing our actions, we forget that work is a mean for realizing our dreams and aspirations and lose our love for our job. To make matters worse, when people feel they are no longer in control, they begin to accumulate more unwanted stuff while also struggling with a sense of guilt and pressure to do something about it. The result? They put off dealing with their stuff indefinitely, generating a vicious cycle of ever-increasing cluttler.
S.S.
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Scott Sonenshein (Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life)
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A conspiracy theory is a one-man human centipede: endlessly feeding on its own cycle of infinitely reconstituted shit. Conspiracy is self-sustaining. It’s self-generative.
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Matt Greene (Jew[ish])
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a forecast is generated for the ideal applicants to predicted future positions and the task is then to acquire those resources in the present with the genes and epigenetic structure most likely to become such applicants given a specific rearing and education program.
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Eli K.P. William (The Naked World (Jubilee Cycle #2))
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The Hooked Model helps the product designer generate an initial prototype for a habit-forming technology. It also helps uncover potential weaknesses in an existing product’s habit-forming potential. Once a product is built, Habit Testing helps uncover product devotees, discover which product elements (if any) are habit forming, and why those aspects of your product change user behavior. Habit Testing includes three steps: identify, codify, and modify. First, dig into the data to identify how people are using the product. Next, codify these findings in search of habitual users. To generate new hypotheses, study the actions and paths taken by devoted users. Finally, modify the product to influence more users to follow the same path as your habitual users, and then evaluate results and continue to modify as needed. Keen observation of one’s own behavior can lead to new insights and habit-forming product opportunities. Identifying areas where a new technology makes cycling through the Hooked Model faster, more frequent, or more rewarding provides fertile ground for developing new habit-forming products.
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Nir Eyal (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products)
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Young women have an advantage because they are also in sync with the lunar cycles. It is an advantage, but a lot of them treat it as a curse. It is a fantastic possibility that your body is both connected to the solar and the lunar cycles. Nature has granted this advantage to a woman because she has been entrusted with the responsibility of propagating the human race. So she has been given some extra privileges, which unfortunately have been perceived socially as disadvantages. People do not know how to handle the bonus energy generated at that time and hence treat it as a curse, and even a kind of madness. (The word “lunatic” is derived, as we know, from “lunar.”)
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Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy)
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In business, only a third of family firms make the transition to a second generation; less than ten percent survive into the third generation. The important, North African, political thinker Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) predicted a similar cycle of rise and decline for all Arab dynasties. In his influential book the Muqaddimah or Introduction, with which King Salman is almost certainly familiar, Ibn Khaldun described how Arab dynasties usually last for three generations or 120 years—whichever came first.
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David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
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In other words, if we cease moving forward in life, we tend to regress to more immature, or what Jung called infantile, modes of adaption. And this regression in the response to the conflict, is what generates the various symptoms of the neurosis – be it the pervasive anxiety, phobias, compulsive behaviours, depression, apathy, or obsessive and intrusive thoughts. But as uncomfortable as such symptoms may be, they serve an important purpose by alerting us to the fact that we are descending down a dangerous life path. For while we regress psychologically, our physical maturation does not cease and a glance in the mirror forever reminds us that we are not keeping pace with the seasons of life and the inexorable march of time. The longer we exist in this conflicted state, the less adapted we feel, and a vicious cycle takes over whereby
“retreat from life leads to regression, and regression heightens resistance to life.”
Carl Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis
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Academy of Ideas
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We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.
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Amy Harmon (What the Wind Knows)
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We live in a wave universe, cycling forward for all eternity, and ruled by wave mathematics: Fourier mathematics. Fourier mathematics is the basis of music theory, light theory, wave theory, quantum mechanics, and holography. It uniquely explains mind, and solves the problem of Cartesian mind-matter interaction. Einstein’s relativity theory is a spacetime misinterpretation of Fourier mathematics, deriving from Einstein’s inability to conceive of a Singularity outside space and time as the mysterious “ether” that
provides the absolute framework for spacetime reality.
If humanity turned its entire attention to holography, and Fourier mathematics, we would be Gods living in paradise in just one generation. What are we waiting for?
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Mike Hockney (The Holographic Soul (The God Series Book 30))
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Your ripples will be felt long after you’re gone, your memory strung through time for generations to come. Everyone will remember you, and no one will ever forget your name.
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Halo Scot (Eye of the Brave (Rift Cycle, #3))
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JOHN A. DAVIS is the president of the Owner Managed Business Institute in Santa Barbara. Formerly, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Southern California. Dr. Davis has organized family business executive programs at several leading business schools, and consults to
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John A. Davis (Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business)
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contributes to Family Business magazine, and is currently writing a book on the best practices of successful family companies.
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John A. Davis (Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business)
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The Ticking Spiral by Stewart Stafford
Man - the only creature that knows it dies,
Creates structures to measure its demise.
To poke and prod with hows and whys;
Hours, seconds, melted candles of surprise.
From booming birth; to bankrupt death,
From nascent looks; to the last breath,
The torch is passed to generations yet.
To carry forth in a cycle reset.
The ticking clock of heartbeats ends,
As we say goodbye to family and friends,
To return to wherever we first transcend,
Time's ever-flowing river never bends.
© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.
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Stewart Stafford
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and I even buy olives once in a while.”22 Bob’s staff, business partners, and customers were barely aware of the silent partner who held his world together. Shirleigh tirelessly answered every call to duty, from packing theremin kits or feeding 30 seminar participants on a $35-a-month food budget, to balancing the company books. She managed every household and mothering duty—cleaning, canning, cooking, baking, laundry, naptime, trips to the library, bedtime stories—and stole a few spare moments for herself to read a magazine. Her cycle of chores ran in a never-ending loop. Her situation, whether she realized it or not, typified the plight of most American women of her generation.
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Albert Glinsky (Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution)
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In the beginning, there was a rapid expansion of a Singularity. Around 380,000 years later, there was light. There was also hydrogen and helium and four stable, fundamental forces of physics. Atoms and those forces worked together to birth the first stars from massive clouds of gas, and those stars lived for hundreds of millions of years before they died in explosions that spread their matter across the sky in clouds of gas and dust—now with heavier elements than what existed before. The forces of physics worked together once again to craft new stars now tightly packed into the first galaxies. As the cycle repeated, heavier elements formed planets orbiting those stars, emerging from disks of gas and dust like dust bunnies under your bed. In our universe, planets can exist only because a few generations of stars died and were reborn. The rebirth of stellar matter into planets is how our Earth came to be. This planet, our home, is covered with a film of life unlike any we’ve yet seen anywhere else in the universe. As far as we know today, it is unique. A blue marble floating in the dark. Earth’s life is fed by a process in which carbon from the air and minerals in the soil are attached together by the energy of photons via photosynthesis in plants. In this process, everything on this planet lives by the constant sacrifice of the nearest star. Every blade of grass, every tree, every bush, every microscopic algae on this planet is a resurrected form of the Sun’s energy. I capture that energy by consuming other things that have died. Every time I eat a meal, the dead matter that made those plants and animals literally gives life to my body through digestion and my metabolism. One day, I will die, and in time my atoms will go back to giving life to something else. Much farther along the arrow of time, our own Sun will explode and spread its essence across the sky. Our Sun’s dust will meet with other stars’ remnants and form new stars and planets of their own. The universe itself exists in an eternal pattern of life, death, and resurrection.
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Mike McHargue (Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science)
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After all, being a part of the Shimmering Generation means that we have to endure the potential and endless shimmering of these flickering screens that follow us on every step and drag us closer and closer to an endless addiction cycle! To fight against the urge of staring at these shimmering screens, to lose oneself in the masses of endless information that just causes paralysis.
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Ryan Gelpke (2018: Our Summer of Creeping Boredom and Beautiful Shimmering (Howl Gang Legend Book 3))
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But there’s nothing complicated about how this dynamic can generate a regular long-term cycle of action and reaction, of innovation and compensation.
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Neil Howe (The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End)
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Contact Us - Sortis
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Grown men send children into battle throughout the world, all the time. Old men create conditions for conflicts, fuel hostilities, and pretend to defend core values—good against evil—whereas all they are doing is ferociously protecting their privileges while coveting the riches of others. They hatch toxic strategies, then send their children charging at the enemy.
To hide their deadly avarice, they speak with conviction about courage and patriotism while bunkered in their headquarters, in offices or on television sets while the blood of youths is spilled in combat, their spirits mangled by the ferocity of battles that will pollute their souls forever.
This vicious cycle starts all over again with every generation, because no war is ever won for good. Hatred feeds the desire for vengeance, which is transmitted alongside genes. The first drop of blood spilled at the dawn of the world triggered the bloodshed that we stubbornly perpetuate all over the earth.
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Hemley Boum (Days Come and Go)
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But then, the lowering of the body and the plucking of ripe fruit just above the graves was meant to hammer this home: the cycle of life is here; it is inescapable; it is to be embraced, cherished, appreciated. One departs and leaves behind the gift of sustenance, of life. They make room for the next generation. We are born, we are shadows, we cast shadows of our own, and then we are gone. All anyone can hope for is to be remembered two shadows deep.
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Hugh Howey (The Silo Saga Omnibus (Silo, #1-3))
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In his inaugural address, President Kennedy proclaimed that “the torch has been passed to a new generation, born in this century.” Having campaigned on the slogan “Let’s get this country moving again,” he committed his peers to “bear any burden, pay any price” to bring “vigor” and “prestige” back into civic life.
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William Strauss (The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny)
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In Brazil, the rainforests of the Amazon are being destroyed at an alarming rate by bulldozing and burning. There are many excellent reasons to prevent this continuing – loss of habitat for organisms, production of carbon dioxide from burning trees, destruction of the culture of native Indian tribes, and so on. What is not a good reason, though, is the phrase that is almost inevitably trotted out, to the effect that the rainforests are the ‘lungs of the planet’. The image here is that the ‘civilized’ regions – that is, the industrialized ones – are net producers of carbon dioxide. The pristine rainforest, in contrast, produces a gentle but enormous oxygen breeze, while absorbing the excess carbon dioxide produced by all those nasty people with cars. It must do, surely? A forest is full of plants, and plants produce oxygen. No, they don’t. The net oxygen production of a rainforest is, on average, zero. Trees produce carbon dioxide at night, when they are not photosynthesizing. They lock up oxygen and carbon into sugars, yes – but when they die, they rot, and release carbon dioxide. Forests can indirectly remove carbon dioxide by removing carbon and locking it up as coal or peat, and by releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Ironically, that’s where a lot of the human production of carbon dioxide comes from – we dig it up and burn it again, using up the same amount of oxygen. If the theory that oil is the remains of plants from the carboniferous period is true, then our cars are burning up carbon that was once laid down by plants. Even if an alternative theory, growing in popularity, is true, and oil was produced by bacteria, then the problem remains the same. Either way, if you burn a rainforest you add a one-off surplus of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but you do not also reduce the Earth’s capacity to generate new oxygen. If you want to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide permanently, and not just cut short-term emissions, the best bet is to build up a big library at home, locking carbon into paper, or put plenty of asphalt on roads. These don’t sound like ‘green’ activities, but they are. You can cycle on the roads if it makes you feel better.
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Terry Pratchett (The Science of Discworld (Science of Discworld, #1))
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perpetuate that same cycle for the next generation? I don’t believe God makes
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Tommy Newberry (Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices; Change Your Life)
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When we constantly sacrifice our own needs in favor of our children’s, we all lose. Our children lose out by having an ungrounded parent who is frequently on the brink of collapse. We lose out on enjoying our life and our children. We also perpetuate this harmful pattern—effectively passing the buck to the next generation.
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Hunter Clarke-Fields (Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids)
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The most common epigenetic tag is DNA methylation, a process that blocks proteins from attaching to a gene, suppressing its expression.27 DNA methylation can positively or adversely affect our health by locking “helpful” or “unhelpful” genes in the “off” position. When a stressor or trauma occurs, researchers have observed irregularities in DNA methylation that can be transmitted, along with a predisposition for physical or emotional health challenges, to subsequent generations.
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Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
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stress-induced irregularities in microRNA levels can affect how genes are expressed in multiple generations.30
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Mark Wolynn (It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle)
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To end the cycle of generational loneliness, new parents need to make connecting familiar and to set boundaries around technology for all family members.
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Tara Bianca (The Flower of Heaven: Opening the Divine Heart Through Conscious Friendship & Love Activism)
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Think for a moment about the flow of biblical history. Think of the many generations of people that existed between the fall of Adam and Eve and the birth of Jesus Christ. Think of the myriad situations and locations in that span of time. Think of all the human governments that rose and fell. Think of all the decisions, great and small, that people made. Think of the constant life-and-death cycle of the physical creation. Now consider this—in order for Jesus to be born as was promised, to live as was necessary, and to die and rise on our behalf as he said he would, God had to exercise absolute rule over the forces of nature and complete control over the events of human history so that, at just the right moment, Jesus would be born, live, die, and rise again for our redemption. Without the rule of
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Paul David Tripp (New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional)