Horns Of A Dilemma Quotes

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of a dilemma.

Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians -- we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted -- to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Big Horn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.

We are tamed animals (some with kind, some with cruel, masters) and should probably starve if we got out of our cage. That is one horn of the dilemma. But in an increasingly planned society, how much of what I value can survive? That is the other horn.

We may see a Creature with forty-nine heads Who lives in the desolate snow, And whenever he catches a cold (which he dreads) He has forty-nine noses to blow. 'We may see the venomous Pink-Spotted Scrunch Who can chew up a man with one bite. It likes to eat five of them roasted for lunch And eighteen for its supper at night. 'We may see a Dragon, and nobody knows That we won't see a Unicorn there. We may see a terrible Monster with toes Growing out of the tufts of his hair. 'We may see the sweet little Biddy-Bright Hen So playful, so kind and well-bred; And such beautiful eggs! You just boil them and then They explode and they blow off your head. 'A Gnu and a Gnocerous surely you'll see And that gnormous and gnorrible Gnat Whose sting when it stings you goes in at the knee And comes out through the top of your hat. 'We may even get lost and be frozen by frost. We may die in an earthquake or tremor. Or nastier still, we may even be tossed On the horns of a furious Dilemma. 'But who cares! Let us go from this horrible hill! Let us roll! Let us bowl! Let us plunge! Let's go rolling and bowling and spinning until We're away from old Spiker and Sponge!

Amazing that we made Jesus into the consummate answer giver because that is not what he usually does. He more often leads us right onto the horns of our own human-made dilemmas, where we are forced to meet God and be honest with ourselves. He creates problems for us more than resolves them, problems that very often cannot be resolved by all-or-nothing thinking but only by love and forgiveness.

These exuberant proclamations of equalitarianism in sundown towns exemplify not only base hypocrisy but also what sociologists call "herrenvolk democracy" -- democracy for the master race. White Americans' verbal commitment to nondiscrimination forms one horn of what Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal famously called "The American Dilemma." Blatant racism forms the other horn. In elite sundown suburbs, this dilemma underlies what we shall later term the "paradox of exclusivity.

[A]ny system which leaves the individual upon one horn of the dualistic dilemma is at best the achievement of courageous despair.

To most people any radical change is even more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns of dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting belief that yb doing so one is accomplishing one's duty / one's duty to the company, to the shareholders, to the family, the city, the state, the fatherland, the church. For, of course, poor Hansen's case wasn't in any way unique; on a smaller scale, and therefore with less power to do evil, he was acting like all those civil servants and statesmen and prelates who go through life spreading misery and destruction in the name of their ideals and under orders from their categorical imperatives.

Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command some things because they are moral? If the former is true, and God had no reason for his commandments, why should we take his whims seriously? If God commanded you to torture and kill a child, would that make it right? “He would never do that!” you might object. But that flicks us onto the second horn of the dilemma. If God does have good reasons for his commandments, why don’t we appeal to those reasons directly and skip the middleman?

I was on the horns of a dilemma; there seemed little point in traveling to hospital to see a comatose stranger and drop off some fizzy pop at his bedside. On the other hand, it would be interesting to experience being a hospital visitor, and there was always an outside chance that he might wake up when I was there. He had rather seemed to enjoy my monologue while we were waiting for the ambulance; well, insofar as I could tell, given that he was unconscious.

I hope it's the good kind of dilemma," Reginald broke Patricia's reverie. "Whatever one you're on the horns of." ... "I was just thinking," she said. "There are so many scary problems in the world. Like, I was just reading that we could be seeing the last of the bees in North America soon. And if that happened, food webs would just collapse, and tons more people would starve. But suppose you had the power to change things? You still might not be able to fix anything, because every time you solve a problem you'd create another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature's way of striking a balance. We humans don't have any natural predators left, so nature has to find another way to handle us." ... "I am, as you know, a fan of nature," said Reginald. "And yet, nature doesn't 'find ways' to do anything. Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It's more that nature's playing field is full of traps.

To most people radical change is even more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns of the dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting belief that by doing so one is doing one's duty- one's duty to the company, to the shareholders, to the family, the city, the state, the fatherland, the Church.

Like the incredulous inspector, many people are not ready to reduce morality to convention or taste. When we say “The Holocaust is bad,” do our powers of reason leave us no way to differentiate that conviction from “I don’t like the Holocaust” or “My culture disapproves of the Holocaust”? Is keeping slaves no more or less rational than wearing a turban or a yarmulke or a veil? If a child is deathly ill and we know of a drug that could save her, is administering the drug no more rational than withholding it? Faced with this intolerable implication, some people hope to vest morality in a higher power. That’s what religion is for, they say—even many scientists, like Stephen Jay Gould. But Plato made short work of this argument 2,400 years ago in Euthyphro. Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command some things because they are moral? If the former is true, and God had no reason for his commandments, why should we take his whims seriously? If God commanded you to torture and kill a child, would that make it right? “He would never do that!” you might object. But that flicks us onto the second horn of the dilemma. If God does have good reasons for his commandments, why don’t we appeal to those reasons directly and skip the middleman? (As it happens, the God of the Old Testament did command people to slaughter children quite often.)

Jinnah, the constitutionalist, with an eye on the all- India stage, was on the horns of a dilemma. Much has been made of the transformation of this secular and Westernized lawyer after 1940. Yet Jinnah’s recourse to Islam was a product of political necessity— the need to win the support of a community that was a distinctive category in official and popular parlance but with no prior history of organizing on a single platform. He could not dilate on his real political objectives because what could rouse Muslims in the minority provinces would put off Muslims where they were in a majority. A populist program to mobilize the Muslim rural masses was out of the question. It would infuriate the landed men who called the shots in provincial politics. This is where recourse to Islam made sense to a politician and a party with neither a populist past nor a populist present. Both politician and party needed to steal the populist march on their rivals.

You," he said, "are a bluestocking." "Sir, I am not." "Anne, it's not an insult. I cannot long endure the company of a stupid woman." "Have you often found yourself on the horns of such a dilemma?

Daniel and the Pelican As I drove home from work one afternoon, the cars ahead of me were swerving to miss something not often seen in the middle of a six-lane highway: a great big pelican. After an eighteen-wheeler nearly ran him over, it was clear the pelican wasn’t planning to move any time soon. And if he didn’t, the remainder of his life could be clocked with an egg timer. I parked my car and slowly approached him. The bird wasn’t the least bit afraid of me, and the drivers who honked their horns and yelled at us as they sped by didn’t impress him either. Stomping my feet, I waved my arms and shouted to get him into the lake next to the road, all the while trying to direct traffic. “C’mon beat it, Big Guy, before you get hurt!” After a brief pause, he cooperatively waddled to the curb and slid down to the water’s edge. Problem solved. Or so I thought. The minute I walked away he was back on the road, resulting in another round of honking, squealing tires and smoking brakes. So I tried again. “Shoo, for crying out loud!” The bird blinked, first one eye then the other, and with a little sigh placated me by returning to the lake. Of course when I started for my car it was instant replay. After two more unsuccessful attempts, I was at my wits’ end. Cell phones were practically non-existent back then, and the nearest pay phone was about a mile away. I wasn’t about to abandon the hapless creature and run for help. He probably wouldn’t be alive when I returned. So there we stood, on the curb, like a couple of folks waiting at a bus stop. While he nonchalantly preened his feathers, I prayed for a miracle. Suddenly a shiny red pickup truck pulled up, and a man hopped out. “Would you like a hand?” I’m seldom at a loss for words, but one look at the very tall newcomer rendered me tongue-tied and unable to do anything but nod. He was the most striking man I’d ever seen--smoky black hair, muscular with tanned skin, and a tender smile flanked by dimples deep enough to drill for oil. His eyes were hypnotic, crystal clear and Caribbean blue. He was almost too beautiful to be real. The embroidered name on his denim work shirt said “Daniel.” “I’m on my way out to the Seabird Sanctuary, and I’d be glad to take him with me. I have a big cage in the back of my truck,” the man offered. Oh my goodness. “Do you volunteer at the Sanctuary?” I croaked, struggling to regain my powers of speech. “Yes, every now and then.” In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect solution to my dilemma. The bird was going to be saved by a knowledgeable expert with movie star looks, who happened to have a pelican-sized cage with him and was on his way to the Seabird Sanctuary.

Whenever they finished a section they would pass it to Constance, who glanced at the headlines and drew mustaches and devil horns on people in the photographs. The children were allowed to linger over the papers as long as they wished, but they seldom lingered long, for the older ones looked forward to their exercises and lessons, which offered a welcome change of pace, and Constance ran out of pictures to deface.

Job presses his point that it is bad policy for God’s most faithful people to suffer (theologically counterintuitive).7 Caught on the horns of this dilemma, what is a God to do? This is what the book is going to sort out. Because the book is about God, the teaching that it offers is valuable to all of us. It does not tell us why Job or any of us suffer, but it does tell us a bit about how we should think about God when we are suffering. This is what we really needed to know anyway.

Resurrection of the dead. They construct a hypothetical of a woman with multiple husbands due to their multiple deaths, and then ask him whose wife she is at the Resurrection,, hoping to stump Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. Jesus replies, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven (Matt. 22:29-30).” Because of this, it is alleged that angels cannot have sexual intercourse with humans.

The Accuser jumped in, “But why does a loving God punish at all? Is it not his obligation to forgive all transgression large or small? What kind of a loving God punishes imperfection? What kind of a loving God casts people into Sheol? That is not love, that is cruelty.” Enoch sighed. He was already weary of hearing “what kind of a loving God” preface a horde of false accusations. But in the interest of fairness, he sought to address each one. “Firstly, I would like to establish that counsel is repeating a falsehood already laid to rest. It is not imperfection that is being punished, it is iniquity. Secondly, may I remind my accusing adversary that a just God is not obligated to forgive anyone anything. A just God punishes sin. Forgiveness without propitiation is the true cruelty. Worse, it is to denigrate the criminal’s own worth to nothing. For if the criminal is forgiven without the penalty being served, then both victim and victimizer have no value. But neither is “love” obligated to forgive, for that would make such actions duty and no longer gracious.” “Ah,” interrupted the Accuser, “But there you are on the horns of a dilemma. For Elohim to be just, he must punish, but for Elohim to be loving, he must forgive. So if he punishes, he is unloving, and if he forgives, he is unjust. So I ask the Judge with humility, submission and deference, which art thou, cruel or impotent?” Now that was a coup, thought the Accuser as he let his impeccable logic sink in to the minds and hearts of ten million “holy ones.” Holy, my rear end.

In the long run, time favors the fettered nations which, amassing forces and illusions, live in the future, in hope; but what can be hoped for in freedom––or in the regime which incarnates it, constituted of dissipation, serenity, and spinelessness? A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb. Life has meaning only in democracy, yet she lacks life. (...) Immediate happiness, imminent disaster––inconsistency of a regime to which one does not adhere without falling on the horns of an agonizing dilemma.

I find myself, like many thoughtful citizens, on the horns of the dilemma of being totally opposed to violence but also as totally opposed to allowing certain conditions in our society to continue. I don’t want any J.C. Penney branch store burned and looted, but I deplore even more the original Watts in which human dignity, aspiration, and often even life were impossible! A contempt for law and resort to violence will certainly destroy any social structure, but is a discomforting fact that they are more often a result of something than a cause. ~ Gene Roddenberry Mar 1970 letter

A simple “no!” may suffice. Returning to our example, Fred may be told after all his arguments and conflict with the banker that he simply will not receive a loan. When Fred walks out of the bank, he has been set back and is in worse shape than he was when he entered, because he has tried to take one of his hoped-for steps toward climbing the mountain, and has been rebuffed. At the very least, he has lost one option. The banker might also, however, thwart Fred – and provide us with a disaster – in another way. He might give Fred a “yes!” answer, but one with so many strings attached that Fred can’t accept it. For example, Mr. Greenback might say, “Well, Fred, all right. You can have your loan. But you must agree to pay 60 percent interest, you must deed your automobile to us, and you must sell your mother’s house and put her in a nursing home so we can be assured that you won’t be messing around trying to help her when you’re supposed to be climbing that mountain.” Such “Yes, but” disasters are often better than a simple “No!” because they put the hero on the horns of a moral dilemma, and in making an ethical choice to turn down the crummy deal, he in effect brings on his own disaster. (Of such stuff are heroes often made.)

A STATE OF CONFLICT September 10, 1777 John Grey found himself wondering how many horns a dilemma could have.

….ideal goods cannot be assimilated without some training and leisure. Like education and religion they are degraded by popularity, and reduced from what the master intended to what the people are able and willing to receive. So pleasing an idea, then, as this of diffused ideal possessions has little application in a society aristocratically framed; for the greater eminence the few attain the less able are the many to follow them. Great thoughts require a great mind and pure beauties a profound sensibility. To attempt to give such things a wide currency is to be willing to denaturalise them in order to boast that they have been propagated. Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.

Stars of Fire by Stewart Stafford At the Gate of Pleiades, Lies the playground of the Deities, At The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic, The Gods' plot and remain cryptic. Between the claws of Scorpio and Cancer, At the mercy of the great Zodiacal dancer. The dilemma on the horns of Aries, Brushes asides all adversaries. Venus trails stardust from her hair, As a supernova across the galaxy flares, A shooting star is the spear of Orion, More is the mane of Leo the lion. Man's Gemini may someday show before us, As chaste Virgo or the mighty Taurus, Or be inanimate as the scales of Libra, Or spread as Cancer or an unchecked fever. Perhaps these pilgrims have visited us before, When Sagittarius took the form of the wise Centaur, Or when Pisces flopped in an Aquarian boat, Or on a lazy hill to the Capricorn goat. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

recognize “a fundamental ambivalence of human reality” (p. 673). So once again, both exclusive humanism and Christianity are hooked on the same horns. That shouldn’t be cause for premature rejoicing for Christians (p. 674), since that would just be Schadenfreude — we don’t have a “solution” either (p. 675). Instead, it raises the apologetic question: “who can respond most profoundly and convincingly to what are ultimately commonly felt dilemmas?” (p. 675). The secular3 age is a level playing field. We’re all trying to make sense of where we are, even why we are, and it’s not easy for any of us. Taylor insists that, while he believes a Christian “take” can account for