Immune To Criticism Quotes

To acquire true self power you have to feel beneath no one, be immune to criticism and be fearless.

Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism.

I am not an atheist preacher. I am not an absolutist or chauvinist whose ways are immune to evolution. My core philosophy is that I might be wrong.

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible." [Defend the right to be offended (openDemocracy, 7 February 2005)]

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity—how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

she was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn’t safely criticize anymore, because you didn’t have the right. You’d lost your immunity.

We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything so as you do not claim it a better way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best represents - a mood.

The problem is that when we don’t care at all what people think and we’re immune to hurt, we’re also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.

You must learn to get in touch with the innermost essence of your being. This true essence is beyond the ego. It is fearless; it is free; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge. It is beneath no one, superior to no one, and full of magic, mystery, and

Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.

At the heart of almost all the pathways I’ve learned about is one guiding principle: if we feel safe, cared for and in control—in a critical moment during injury or disease, or generally throughout our lives—we do better. We feel less pain, less fatigue, less sickness. Our immune system works with us instead of against us. Our bodies ease off on emergency defenses and can focus on repair and growth.

No one individual is immune to the criticism of others and none can claim to be above intellectual reproach. No one is omniscient or infallible, so we are all forced to defend our arguments with logic, evidence, and persuasion.

Dancing is spiritual. Dancing is personal. Some people look at a dancing person and say, What a total show-off. They only notice the body of the dancing person. They look at the way the elbows jut out, the way the hips shake and the neck bends. They criticize all of these things, saying, This dancing person shouldn't be dancing. This dancing person has no rhythm. But the dancer is immune to all of this.

In critical situations, Yoga and Ayurveda driven community immunity plans are better than open-ended herd immunity.

As an entrepreneur, it’s critical to have a vision and to have faith in your vision. Almost every entrepreneur has to go up against some doubters, and faith provides immunity against doubts.

Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a “better” way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from the eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century.

Your gut includes the stomach, small intestine, large intestine (which includes the colon), liver, and gallbladder. The gut is responsible for ensuring that you absorb the nutrients of the food you eat, properly expel waste and toxins, and maintain a strong immune system. Yet not only is it critical for these everyday functions, your gut also holds a life force of its own. Food does not digest just from the physical process of food breakdown (a process scientific study hasn’t fully pieced together); there are also critical spiritual and metaphysical factors involved in digestion. That’s why enlightened beings on the planet employ eating techniques such as slow and thorough chewing; mindful, present eating; prayer before, during, or after meals; and becoming one with your food.

The real working class, though they hate war and are immune to jingoism, are never really pacifist, because their life teaches them something different. To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it.

A little training in philosophy can also help us build robust critical defenses and immunize us against the wiles of pretentious wafflers and snake-oil salesmen.

No country is immune to criticism, nor should it be. But when that criticism takes the form of singling out just one country, unfairly, bitterly and relentlessly, over and over and over, that’s just wrong—and we all know it.

Law 9: Be unfuckwithable. Extraordinary minds do not need to seek validation from outside opinion or through the attainment of goals. Instead, they are truly at peace with themselves and the world around them. They live fearlessly—immune to criticism or praise and fueled by their own inner happiness and self-love.

Scientific advancement carries risk,” Kohler argued. “It always has. Space programs, genetic research, medicine—they all make mistakes. Science needs to survive its own blunders, at any cost. For everyone’s sake.” Vittoria was amazed at Kohler’s ability to weigh moral issues with scientific detachment. His intellect seemed to be the product of an icy divorce from his inner spirit. “You think CERN is so critical to the earth’s future that we should be immune from moral responsibility?

Your true Self, which is your spirit, your soul, is completely free of those things. It is immune to criticism, it is unfearful of any challenge, and it feels beneath no one. And yet, it is also humble and feels superior to no one, because it recognizes that everyone else is the same Self, the same spirit in different disguises.

Mihalovic and other critics claim that chemotherapy, in actuality, boosts cancer growth and long-term mortality rates by destroying the immune system, increasing neurocognitive decline, disrupting endocrine functioning, and causing organ and metabolic toxicities. Patients basically live in a permanent state of disease until their death.

Your gut has its own immune system, the “gut-associated lymphatic tissue” (GALT). It represents 70 to 80 percent of your body’s total immune system. This speaks volumes about the importance—and vulnerability—of your gut. If the events that take place in the gut weren’t so critical to life, then the majority of your immune system wouldn’t have to be there to guard and protect it.

Sleep, mental health, healthy relationships, exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness—we saw in our patients that these six things were critical for healing. As important, the literature provided evidence of why these things were effective. Fundamentally, they all targeted the underlying biological mechanism—a dysregulated stress-response system and the neurologic, endocrine, and immune disruptions that ensued.

There are enough chemical clues to convince anyone that mood, beliefs, expectations, fears, memories, predispositions, habits, and old conditioning—all centered in the mind—are critical to a person’s health.

Where did secular liberalism go wrong? It has been undone by its own ideas. The first idea is that matters of conscience — religion, ethics, and values — are private matters. The privatizing of conscience started with two important principles: religion should be separated from the state and people should not be forced to believe one way or the other. But it went further to say that belief has no place in the public sphere. Conscience belongs in homes and houses of worship, not in the marketplace. By making conscience private, secular liberals had hoped to prevent believers from introducing sectarian beliefs into politics. But of course they couldn’t, since freedom of belief means believers are free to speak their minds in public. Instead, secularism imposed a gag order on itself. Because “private” is equated with “personal” and “subjective,” questions of conscience were placed out of bounds of serious critical evaluation. … … The mistake lies in thinking that because conscience is free from coercion, it must be free from criticism, reason, truth, or independent, objective standards of right and wrong. The indispensable principle of freedom of belief has mutated into an unthinking assumption that matters of belief are immune to critical public inquiry and shared evaluative norms.

Comparative suffering is a function of fear and scarcity. Falling down, screwing up, and facing hurt often lead to bouts of second-guessing our judgment, our self-trust, and even our worthiness. I am enough can slowly turn into Am I really enough? If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past decade, it’s that fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. My husband died and that grief is worse than your grief over an empty nest. I’m not allowed to feel disappointed about being passed over for promotion when my friend just found out that his wife has cancer. You’re feeling shame for forgetting your son’s school play? Please—that’s a first-world problem; there are people dying of starvation every minute. The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough. Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world. The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce. Yes, perspective is critical. But I’m a firm believer that complaining is okay as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us.

When our internal voice starts criticizing us, lashing out, it can feel like we’re under attack. Because our brain doesn’t distinguish between imagination and reality, these internal attacks are perceived by our mind just as a real, physical attack would be, and they can generate an automatic physical reaction known as the threat response or fight-or-flight response. The effects of this activation are well-known. Just as a zebra reacts to the stress of being chased by a lion, the human body shoots adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) through its veins, and directs all its resources toward crucial functions: elevated heart and breathing rates, muscle reaction, vision acuity, and so forth. The body is no longer concerned with living ten more years, but with surviving ten more minutes. It shuts down nonurgent functions such as muscle repair, digestion, and the immune system,6 as well as “superfluous” functions such as cognitive reasoning. In other words, because it’s not critical to survival, intelligent thinking gets shut down.

When I lived in other places I looked on their evils with the curious eye of a traveler; I was not responsible for them; it cost me nothing to be a critic, for I had not been there long, and I did not feel that I would stay. But here, now that I am both native and citizen, there is no immunity to what is wrong.

They perform hundreds of critical health tasks. Combined, they can form a powerful antioxidant called copper-zinc superoxide dismutase, or CuZnSOD. It is one of your body’s most potent natural defense mechanisms against aging and molecular damage. Zinc is a key mineral in the support of healthy immune function, energy production, and mood.

Healing Foods When you’re looking to boost the immune system and support the reproductive system, the best foods to concentrate on are wild blueberries, sesame tahini, avocados, black beans, asparagus, apples, spinach, black grapes, and cucumbers. They’ll help by variously providing antioxidants, preventing hot flashes, providing critical nutrients to fortify vital organs, reducing inflammation, and keeping hormone levels balanced. Herbs and Supplements to Address General Symptoms Silver hydrosol: kills viruses, bacteria, and other microbes on contact and supports the immune system. Zinc: kills viruses, boosts the immune system, and helps protect the endocrine system. Licorice root: aids the adrenal glands and helps balance the body’s levels of cortisol and cortisone. L-lysine: impairs the ability of virus cells to move and reproduce. Vitamin B12 (as methylcobalamin and/or adenosylcobalamin): strengthens the central nervous system. Nascent iodine: stabilizes and strengthens the thyroid and the rest of the endocrine system. Ashwagandha: fortifies the adrenal glands and helps balance the production of cortisol.

In view of the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, life's meaning is an unconditional one, at least potentially. That unconditional meaning, however, is paralleled by the unconditional value of each and every person. It is that which warrants the indelible quality of the dignity of man. Just as life remains potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable, so too does the value of each and every person stay with him or her, and it does so because it is based on the values that he or she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the usefulness that he or she may or may not retain in the present. More specifically, this usefulness is usually defined in terms of functioning for the benefit of society. But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that na individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, "mercy" killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from a conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch. Even in the setting of training analyses such an indoctrination may take place. Nihilism does not contend that there is nothing, but it states that everything is meaningless. And George A. Sargent was right when he promulgated the concept of "learned meaninglessness." He himself remembered a therapist who said, "George, you must realize that the world is a joke. There is no justice, everything is random. Only when you realize this will you understand how silly it is to take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in the universe. It just is. There's no particular meaning in what decision you make today about how to act." One must generalize such a criticism. In principle, training is indispensable, but if so, therapists should see their task in immunizing the trainee against nihilism rather than inoculating him with the cynicism that is a defense mechanism against their own nihilism.

Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.... The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism. Any fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible. Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us. (MR 216)

[B]eyond hiding our need and neurotically pursuing self-esteem, there is a third way our neurotic anxiety about death interferes with love. And this is the darkest manifestation of all, as it makes us violent. Because our worldview is the source of our significance and self-esteem, we want to defend it from the criticisms of out-group members. Those who are different from us implicitly or explicitly call into question the things we hold most dear, the cultural values that ground and shape the contours of our identity and self-esteem in the face of death. In this, out-group members become a source of anxiety, an existential threat. To cope with the anxiety, we rush to defend our worldview and become dogmatic, fundamentalist, and ideological in regard to our values, culture, and way of life. We embrace our worldview as unique and exceptional, as superior to other worldviews, which we deem inferior, mistaken, and even dangerous. This mindset begins the process in which out-group members are denigrated and eventually demonized, sowing the seeds of violence. The point to note here is how this violence is fueled by an underlying neurotic fear that the cultural projects that we’ve invested in and sacrificed for are not actually immortal, eternal, timeless, or immune to death.

It is especially critical that you avoid processed meats such as frankfurters, bologna, salami, lunch meat, beef jerky, smoked fish, bacon, sausage, ham, pepperoni, SPAM and others that are preserved with nitrites. Why? Because this chemical is a potent anti-immunity, cancer-causing chemical. When possible, reach for meats that are nitrite-free, which does include certain brands of hot dogs, bacon, sausage and ham among others.

An existential faith is a hot, committed view of the world layered into the affective dispositions, habits and institutional priorities of its confessors. The intensity of commitment to it typically exceeds the power of the arguments and evidence advanced. On my reading, then, each thinker listed above is a carrier of a distinctive existential faith. The faith in which each is invested has not yet been established in a way that rules out of court every perspective except it. It is a contestable faith. This is not to deny that impressive, comparative considerations might be offered on its behalf, or that it might be subjected to critical interrogations that press its advocates to adjust this or that aspect of it. An existential faith is not immune to new argument and evidence, as I will try to show; commitment to it, rather, is seldom exhausted by them.

Shall I stop in to check on Bella before I go?” “Not dressed like that. You would give her palpitations if she knew you were going into danger for her benefit.” “Luckily, I am mostly immune to Bella’s powers and could cure such palpitations with a thought,” Gideon mused. Jacob raised a brow, taking the medic’s measure. He could not recall the last time he had heard the Ancient crack wise about anything. It was not a wholly unpleasant experience, and it amused the Enforcer. “I . . . am aware of what is occurring between you and Legna, as you know,” Jacob mentioned with casual quiet. “I am only recently Imprinted myself, but should you require—” He broke off, suddenly uncomfortable. “Of course, you probably know far more about Imprinting than I ever will.” He is reaching out to you. Legna’s soft encouragement made Gideon suddenly aware of that fact. It was one of those nuances he would have missed completely, rusty as he was with matters of friendship and how to relate better to others. “I am glad for the offer of any help you can provide,” Gideon said quickly. “In fact, I had wanted to ask you . . . something . . .” What did I want to ask him? he asked Legna urgently. I do not know! I did not tell you to engage him, just to graciously accept his offer. Oh. My apologies. Still, you are clever enough to think of something, are you not? Legna knew he was baiting her, so she laughed. Ask him why it is you seem to constantly irritate me. I will ask him no such thing, Magdelegna. Well then, you had better come up with an alternative, because that is the only suggestion I have. “Yes?” Jacob was encouraging neutrally, trying to be patient as the medic seemed to gather his thoughts. “Do you find that your mate tends to lecture you incessantly?” he asked finally. Jacob laughed out loud. “You know something, I can actually advise you about that, Gideon.” “Can you?” The medic actually sounded hopeful. “Give up. Now. While you still have your sanity. Arguing with her will get you nowhere. And, also, never ever ask questions that refer to the whys and wherefores of women, females, or any other feminine-based criticism. Otherwise you will only earn an argument at a higher decibel level. Oh, and one other thing.” Gideon cocked a brow in question. “All the rules I just gave you, as well as all the ones she lays down during the course of your relationship, can and will change at whim. So, as I see it, you can consider yourself just as lost as every other man on the planet. Good luck with it.” “That is not a very heartening thought,” Gideon said wryly, ignoring Legna’s giggle in his background thoughts.

Consumption is a universal phenomenon. All humans consume varieties of products, many of which beyond actual necessity, because it activates the brain's reward center. And the more a certain product activates the reward center with its unique characteristics or its predominant social stature, the more that product gets chiseled into the long-term memory of the consumer, making it a fundamental part of the individual's psychological well being. Thus the human mind grows a deep psychological bond with a product. And this bond can grow so strong in time that it would defend itself from all sorts of criticisms. It is the brain's way to maintain its internal purely individualistic well being. Hence, a strong psychological bond between the mind and a product slowly not only becomes invincible to criticisms, but also, develops its own cognitive immune system against such criticisms.

The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year's pension as a solatium for his wounded character.

For the point is to defend people but not their ideas. It is absolutely right that Muslims - that everyone - should enjoy freedom of religious belief in any free society. It is absolutely right that they should protest against discrimination whenever and wherever they experience it. It is absolutely wrong of them to demand that their belief-system - that any system of belief or thought - should be immunized against criticism, irreverence, satire, even scornful disparagement. This distinction between the individual and his creed is a foundation truth of democracy, and any community that seeks to blur it will not do itself any favours.

Herd immunity may never be achieved because high vaccination rates encourage the evolution of more severe disease-causing organisms “A partially effective immune response — enough to exert selective pressure but not effective enough to suppress escape viral mutants — is the most effective driving force of antigenic variation.” Rodpothong P, Auewarakul P. Viral evolution and transmission effectiveness. World J Virol 2012 Oct 12; 1(5): 131-34. In theory, if enough people are vaccinated, herd immunity will be achieved and chains of infection will be disrupted. In reality, a true herd immunity threshold may never be reached within normal heterogenous populations. If a true herd immunity threshold level is achieved, it will create a strong selective pressure that encourages the emergence of mutant viral strains.

Do we really want to condemn as excessive the use of safety helmets, car seats, playgrounds designed so kids will be less likely to crack their skulls, childproof medicine bottles, and baby gates at the top of stairs? One writer criticizes "the inappropriateness of excessive concern in low-risk environments," but of course reasonable people disagree about what constitutes both "excessive" and "low risk." Even if, as this writer asserts, "a young person growing up in a Western middle-class family is safer today than at any time in modern history," the relevance of that relative definition of safety isn't clear. Just because fewer people die of disease today than in medieval times doesn't mean it's silly to be immunized. And perhaps young people are safer today because of the precautions that some critics ridicule.

Oxford philosopher Timothy Williamson suggests that scepticism initially looks appealing (despite its bleak consequences) because it is a good thing carried too far. The good thing is that we have a healthy critical ability to double-check individual things we believe by suspending judgement in them temporarily to see whether they really fit with the rest of what we know. But if this ability to suspend individual beliefs serves as a useful immune system to weed out inconsistent and ungrounded ideas, scepticism is like an autoimmune disease in which the protective mechanism goes too far and attacks the healthy parts of the organism. Once we have suspended too much—for example, once we have brought into doubt the reality of the whole outer world—we no longer have the resources to reconfirm or support any of the perfectly reasonable things we believe.

To understand something sufficiently well to be able to program it for a computer does not mean to understand it to its ultimate depth. There can be no such ultimate understanding in practical affairs. Programming is rather a test of understanding. In this respect it is like writing; often when we think we understand something and attempt to write about it, our very act of composition reveals our lack of understanding even to ourselves. Our pen writes the word 'because' and suddenly stops. We thought we understood the 'why' of something, but discover that we don't. We begin a sentence with 'obviously,' and then see that what we meant to write is not obvious at all. Sometimes we connect two clauses with the word 'therefore,' only to then see that our chain of reasoning is defective. Programming is like that. It is, after all, writing, too. But in ordinary writing we sometimes obscure our lack of understanding, our failures in logic, by unwittingly appealing to the immense flexibility of a natural language and to its inherent ambiguity... An interpreter of of programming-language-texts, a computer, is immune to the seductive influence of mere eloquence... A computer is a merciless critic.

Perhaps what matters,” Sunstein muses, “is not whether people are right on the facts, but whether they are frightened.” And people do seem to be frightened. We are locking our doors and pulling our children out of public school and buying guns and ritually sanitizing our hands to allay a wide range of fears, most of which are essentially fears of other people. All the while we are also, in our way, reckless. We get intoxicated, from the Latin “to poison,” for fun. This contradiction leads Sunstein to worry that regulatory laws based on the priorities of the general public maybe prone to a pattern of “paranoia and neglect.” Too much attention may be spent on minimal risks, while too little is paid to pressing threats. Paranoia, the theorist Eve Sedgwick observes, tends to be contagious. She calls it a “strong theory,” meaning a wide-ranging, reductive theory that displaces other ways of thinking. And paranoia very frequently passes for intelligence. As Sedgwick observes, “to theorize out of anything but a paranoid critical stance has come to seem naïve, pious, or complaisant.” She does not believe that paranoid thinking is necessarily delusional or wrong, but only that there is value to approaches that are less rooted in suspicion. “Paranoia,” Sedgwick writes, “knows some things well and others poorly.

What I find difficult, when I read, is to encounter other people’s achievements passed off as one’s own. I find it difficult to discover literary tradition so warmly embraced and coddled, as if artists existed merely to have flagrant intercourse with the past, guaranteed to draw a crowd but also certain to cover that crowd in an old, heavy breading. I find it difficult when a narrative veers toward soap opera, when characters are explained by their childhoods, when setting is used as spackle to hold together chicken-wire characters who couldn’t even stand up to an artificial wind, when depictions of landscape are intermissions while the author catches his breath and gets another scene ready. I find writing difficult that too readily subscribes to the artistic ideas of other writers, that willingly accepts language as a tool that must be seen and not heard, that believes in happy endings, easy revelations, and bittersweet moments of self-understanding. I find writing difficult that could have been written by anyone. That’s difficult to me, horribly so. Mr. Difficult? It’s not Gaddis. Mr. Difficult is the writer willing to sell short the aims of literature, to serve as its fuming, unwanted ambassador, to apologize for its excesses or near misses, its blind alleys, to insult the reading public with film-ready versions of reality and experience and inner sensations, scenes flying jauntily by under the banner of realism, which lately grants it full critical immunity.

Good friendship, in Buddhism, means considerably more than associating with people that one finds amenable and who share one's interests. It means in effect seeking out wise companions to whom one can look for guidance and instruction. The task of the noble friend is not only to provide companionship in the treading of the way. The truly wise and compassionate friend is one who, with understanding and sympathy of heart, is ready to criticize and admonish, to point out one's faults, to exhort and encourage, perceiving that the final end of such friendship is growth in the Dhamma. The Buddha succinctly expresses the proper response of a disciple to such a good friend in a verse of the Dhammapada: 'If one finds a person who points out one's faults and who reproves one, one should follow such a wise and sagacious counselor as one would a guide to hidden treasure' If we associate closely with those who are addicted to the pursuit of sense pleasures, power, riches and fame, we should not imagine that we will remain immune from those addictions: in time our own minds will gradually incline to these same ends. If we associate closely with those who, while not given up to moral recklessness, live their lives comfortably adjusted to mundane routines, we too will remain stuck in the ruts of the commonplace. If we aspire for the highest — for the peaks of transcendent wisdom and liberation — then we must enter into association with those who represent the highest. Even if we are not so fortunate as to find companions who have already scaled the heights, we can well count ourselves blessed if we cross paths with a few spiritual friends who share our ideals and who make earnest efforts to nurture the noble qualities of the Dhamma in their hearts. When we raise the question how to recognize good friends, how to distinguish good advisors from bad advisors, the Buddha offers us crystal-clear advice. In the Shorter Discourse on a Full-Moon Night (MN 110) he explains the difference between the companionship of the bad person and the companionship of the good person. The bad person chooses as friends and companions those who are without faith, whose conduct is marked by an absence of shame and moral dread, who have no knowledge of spiritual teachings, who are lazy and unmindful, and who are devoid of wisdom. As a consequence of choosing such bad friends as his advisors, the bad person plans and acts for his own harm, for the harm of others, and the harm of both, and he meets with sorrow and misery. In contrast, the Buddha continues, the good person chooses as friends and companions those who have faith, who exhibit a sense of shame and moral dread, who are learned in the Dhamma, energetic in cultivation of the mind, mindful, and possessed of wisdom. Resorting to such good friends, looking to them as mentors and guides, the good person pursues these same qualities as his own ideals and absorbs them into his character. Thus, while drawing ever closer to deliverance himself, he becomes in turn a beacon light for others. Such a one is able to offer those who still wander in the dark an inspiring model to emulate, and a wise friend to turn to for guidance and advice.

[Nero] castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images,​ fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing. He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched​ by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House. Its size and splendour will be sufficiently indicated by the following details. Its vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high; and it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade​ a mile long. There was a pond too, like a sea, surrounded with buildings to represent cities,​ besides tracts of country, varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with great numbers of wild and domestic animals. In the rest of the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of‑pearl. There were dining-rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens. His mother offended him by too strict surveillance and criticism of his words and acts. At last terrified by her violence and threats, he determined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, contriving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and dropping them upon her while she slept. When this leaked out through some of those connected with the plot, he devised a collapsible boat,​ to destroy her by shipwreck or by the falling in of its cabin. ...[He] offered her his contrivance, escorting her to it in high spirits and even kissing her breasts as they parted. The rest of the night he passed sleepless in intense anxiety, awaiting the outcome of his design. On learning that everything had gone wrong and that she had escaped by swimming, driven to desperation he secretly had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman Lucius Agermus, when he joyfully brought word that she was safe and sound, and then ordered that the freedman be seized and bound, on the charge of being hired to kill the emperor; that his mother be put to death, and the pretence made that she had escaped the consequences of her detected guilt by suicide.

No respecter of evidence has ever found the least clue as to what life is all about, and what people should do with it. Oh, there have been lots of brilliant guesses. But honest, educated people have to identify with them as such--as guesses. What are guesses worth? Scientifically and legally, they are not worth doodley-squat. As the saying goes: “Your guess is as good as mine.” The guesses we like best, as with so many things we like best, were taught to us in childhood--by people who loved us and wished us well. We are reluctant to criticize those guesses. It is an ultimate act of rudeness to find fault with anything which is given to us in a spirit of love. So a modern, secular education is often painful. By its very nature, it invites us to question the wisdom of the ones we love. Too bad. I have said that one guess is as good as another, but that is only roughly so. Some guesses are crueler than others--which is to say, harder on human beings, and on other animals as well. The belief that God wants heretics burned to death is a case in point. Some guesses are more suicidal than others. The belief that a true lover of God is immune to the bites of copperheads and rattlesnakes is a case in point. Some guesses are greedier and more egocentric than others. Belief in the divine right of kings and presidents is a case in point. Those are all discredited guesses. But it is reasonable to suppose that other bad guesses are poisoning our lives today. A good education in skepticism can help us to discover those bad guesses, and to destroy them with mockery and contempt. Most of them were made by honest, decent people who had no way of knowing what we know, or what we can find out, if we want to. We have one hell of a lot of good information about our bodies, about our planet, and the universe--about our past. We don’t have to guess as much as the old folks did. Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, “Sir, you did not give us enough information.” I would add to that, “All the same, Sir, I’m not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information.

Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. There is racial privilege, gender (and identity) privilege, heterosexual privilege, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, educational privilege, religious privilege, and the list goes on and on. At some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold. Nearly everyone, particularly in the developed world, has something someone else doesn’t, something someone else yearns for. The problem is, cultural critics talk about privilege with such alarming frequency and in such empty ways, we have diluted the word’s meaning. When people wield the word “privilege,” it tends to fall on deaf ears because we hear that word so damn much it has become white noise.

An exponent of love is immune to the criticism of a genius, for divine inspiration is superior to glib talk.

At the root of the problem? That sticky wheat protein, gluten. Although the jury is still out on the connections between gluten sensitivity and behavioral or psychological issues, we do know a few facts: People with celiac disease may be at increased risk for developmental delay, learning difficulties, tic disorders, and ADHD.6 Depression and anxiety are often severe in patients with gluten sensitivity.7, 8 This is primarily due to the cytokines that block production of critical brain neurotransmitters like serotonin, which is essential in regulating mood. With the elimination of gluten and often dairy, many patients have been freed from not just their mood disorders but other conditions caused by an overactive immune system, like allergies and arthritis. As many as 45 percent of people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have gastrointestinal problems.9 Although not all gastrointestinal symptoms in ASD result from celiac disease, data shows an increased prevalence of celiac in pediatric cases of autism, compared to the general pediatric population. The good news is that we can reverse many of the symptoms of neurological, psychological, and behavioral disorders just by going gluten-free and adding supplements like DHA and probiotics to our diet.

A measles epidemic in Ireland (over 1,500 reported cases in 2000) has been blamed on Wakefield. Three children died. Fears of an epidemic in Scotland (where Wakefield once practiced medicine) and England were also fueled by Wakefield’s claims. Cases of measles in England rose to a 20-year high following the collapse in MMR immunization rates.

When we start to look for the sins and mistakes of others, two tragedies occur. First, we find sins and expose them, often through gossip and slander, rather than allow love to cover a multitude of sins. Second, by being a critic—a flawed critic—we remove ourselves from God’s covering of our flaws. We forfeit immunity, and the ultimate result is disastrous self-injury.

To understand something sufficiently well to be able to program it for a computer does not mean to understand it to its ultimate depth. There can be no such ultimate understanding in practical affairs. Programming is rather a test of understanding. In this respect it is like writing; often when we think we understand something and attempt to write about it, our very act of composition reveals our lack of understanding even to ourselves. Our pen writes the word 'because' and suddenly stops. We thought we understood the 'why' of something, but discover that we don't. We begin a sentence with 'obviously,' and then see that what we meant to write is not obvious at all. Sometimes we connect two clauses with the word 'therefore,' only to then see that our chain of reasoning is defective. Programming is like that. It is, after all, writing, too. But in ordinary writing we sometimes obscure our lack of understanding, our failures in logic, by unwittingly appealing to the immense flexibility of a natural language and to its inherent ambiguity... An interpreter of programming-language-texts, a computer, is immune to the seductive influence of mere eloquence... A computer is a merciless critic.

Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a “better” way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from the eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A

In recent years we might be compared to a team of doctors issuing prescriptions to cure or to immunize our members against spiritual diseases. Each time some moral or spiritual ailment was diagnosed, we have rushed to the pharmacy to concoct another remedy, encapsulate it as a program and send it out with pages of directions for use... Over medication, over-programming is a critically serious problem.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity. It is ironical that we senators can in debate in the Senate, directly or indirectly, by any form of words, impute to any American who is not a senator any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming an American--and without that non-senator American having any legal redress against us--yet if we say the same thing in the Senate about our colleagues we can be stopped on the grounds of being out of order. It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection, and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate floor.

For a realistic assessment, one had to turn to those who remained inside Germany. They painted a very different, much grimmer picture. One of the most sensitive and valuable witnesses was the journalist Sebastian Haffner, who stayed in Germany until 1938. Though no one expected it when Hitler became chancellor, Haffner notes, his policies were remarkably successful at first. Within three years, Germany went from deep economic depression to full employment. Hitler also rearmed the nation, making it once again the dominant military power on the continent. And then there were the foreign policy triumphs: the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the incorporation of Austria, the acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Looking back in April 1939, Hitler could say, “I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised production in all fields of our national economy. . . . I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans, who had been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space.” To which a despondent Haffner could only reply: “Damn it, it was all true, or nearly all.” Former opponents, Communists and Social Democrats among them, were won over by Hitler’s undeniable accomplishments. Haffner estimates that at his height, Hitler had the support of 90 percent of the German people, and that a majority of those who had voted against him in 1933 were now Nazi Party members or at least party sympathizers. This, Haffner says, was “perhaps his greatest achievement of all.” What’s more, such wide popularity made it difficult for critics to find fault, even when they weren’t being hounded by the Gestapo to conform. “I don’t like that business with the Jews either,” Haffner would hear from acquaintances, “but look at all the things the man has achieved!” What could one say? Haffner himself was immune to Hitler’s appeal in part because he had many Jewish friends and a Jewish girlfriend. But articulating a response was not easy because rejecting Hitler for his faults seemed to require rejecting his achievements as well, and few wanted to go back to the frustrating political paralysis of Weimar. Opponents of the Nazis who had the inner strength to resist the inevitable self-doubt that had to creep in when everyone around them was applauding Hitler for his all-too-obvious achievements found themselves increasingly living in a world of intellectual isolation and muted skepticism. According to Haffner, “What passive resistance there was to the wave of Hitlerism in Germany was mainly caused by his anti-Semitism,” but how many wanted to stand up and be labeled defenders of the Jews?

The problem is that when we don’t care at all what people think and we’re immune to hurt we’re also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.

The problem is that when we don’t care at all what people think and we’re immune to hurt, we’re also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection. I believe there’s even more risk in hiding yourself and your gifts from the world.

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted, or in which they have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted, is absurd... The moment you say that an idea system is sacred, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

We must have a sense of this illusion of the Virtual somewhere, since, at the same time as we plunge into this machinery and its superficial abysses, it is as though we viewed it as theatre. Just as we view news coverage as theatre. Of news coverage we are the hostages, but we also treat it as spectacle, consume it as spectacle, without regard for its credibility. A latent incredulity and derision prevent us from being totally in the grip of the information media. It isn't critical consciousness that causes us to distance ourselves from it in this way, but the reflex of no longer wanting to play the game. Somewhere in us lies a profound desire not to have information and transparency (nor perhaps freedom and democracy - all this needs looking at again). Towards all these ideals of modernity there is something like a collective form of mental reserve, of innate immunity. It would be best, then, to pose all these problems in terms other than those of alienation and the unhappy destiny of the subject (which is where all critical analysis ends up). The unlimited extension of the Virtual itself pushes us towards something like pataphysics, as the science of all that exceeds its own limits, of all that exceeds the laws of physics and metaphysics. The pre-eminently ironic science, corresponding to a state in which things reach a pitch that is simultaneously paroxystic and parodic.

Renewing cells include some types of normal cells that can divide, like immune cells; progenitor cells, which can keep dividing even longer; and those critical cells in our bodies called stem cells, which can divide indefinitely as long as they are healthy.

If you know who you are, it makes you immune to criticism

Sleep is among the most critical factors for peak performance, memory, productivity, immune function, and mood regulation. Even a mild sleep reduction or a departure from a set sleep routine (for example, going to bed late one night, sleeping in the next morning) can produce detrimental effects on cognitive performance for many days afterward.

There’s a second reason the liberal class loves microfinance, and it’s extremely simple: microlending is profitable. Lending to the poor, as every subprime mortgage originator knows, can be a lucrative business. Mixed with international feminist self-righteousness, it is also a bulletproof business, immune to criticism. The million-dollar paydays it has brought certain microlenders are the wages of virtue. This combination is the real reason the international goodness community believes that empowering poor women by lending to them at usurious interest rates is a fine thing all around.29

The moment you say an idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

When your internal reference point is your spirit, when you are immune to criticism and unfearful of any challenge, you can harness the power of love, and use energy creatively for the experience of affluence and evolution.

Undoctrination Sonnet If we teach kids history, They say we're indoctrinating them. If we immunize them against disease, They say we're microchipping them. If we teach kids science, They say we're practicing blasphemy. If we teach kids biology, They say we're messing with their identity. With such mentality of a caveman, How on earth did you manage to conceive! I guess, to raise a human takes common sense, But to make a baby takes only genital breach. Hence it is more reason for reason to persevere. There is no way we can let stone age reappear.

When I lived in other places I looked on their evils with the curious eye of a traveler; I was not responsible for them; it cost me nothing to be a critic, for I had not been there long, and did not feel that I would stay. But here, now that I am both native and citizen, there is no immunity to what is wrong. It is impossible to escape the sense that I am involved in history. What I am has been to a considerable extent determined by what my forbears were, by how they chose to treat this place while they lived in it; the lives of most of them diminished it, and limited its possibilities, and narrowed its future. And every day I am confronted by the question of what inheritance I will leave.

He'd never have to know why I made it, a negative energy cake, and at least it would keep him quiet for a while, because the roof of his mouth would be all clogged up, the fact that where’s all this aggression coming from, dear me, the fact that unless you’re upbeat enough, and immune to criticism, you’re just a sitting duck if someone makes a single untoward remark.

Furthermore, I haven’t found any evidence that HIV ever actually kills a T-cell.126,127 They seem to instead get along quite well. For this reason, critics argue the collapse of the immune system cannot be plausibly explained merely by the presence of HIV.

Freedom of speech includes the right to expose lies, as Lipstadt did. It does not grant immunity from criticism to bigots like Irving.

Here, of course, they were not entirely wrong. There can be no doubt that European immigrants to the New World are to blame for the degradation, persecution, and finally the large-scale death of American Indians. German and European criticism of white America is wholly justified here. What seems odd, however, is the special emotional affinity of Germans with Indians, since there were also millions of German emigrants to the United States who—presumably as Americans—participated in this genocide. But somehow Americans of German origin remained immune to this accusation, and to their fellow Germans’ hatred of white America. The land of the Yankees thus became opposed to both Indians and Germans, an existential threat to the one, and, by extension, to the other.

The extent to which the distinction between “social” and “intellectual” is accepted as unproblematic by observers of science may have significant consequences for the reports about science which they produce. The Social and the Scientific: The Observer’s Dilemma At one extreme, we can envisage the wholesale adoption by an observer of the distinction mentioned above. In this case, the observer holds an assumption that scientific phenomena occupy a realm largely distinct from that of social phenomena, and that it is only to the latter that the concepts, procedures, and expertise of sociology can be applied. As a result, the procedures and achievements central to scientists’ work become largely immune from sociological explanation. Approaches which implicitly adopt this standpoint have been roundly criticised on several grounds. Rather than repeat these criticisms in detail, we shall merely outline some of the main critical themes. Firstly, the decision to concentrate only on “social” rather than “technical” aspects of science severely limits the range of phenomena that can be selected as appropriate for study. Put simply, this means that there is no point in doing sociology of science unless one can clearly identify the presence of some politician breathing down the necks of working scientists. Where there is no such obvious interference by external agencies, it is argued, science can proceed without the need for sociological analysis. This argument hinges on a particularly limited notion of the occasional influence of sociopolitical factors; the substance of science proceeds unaffected if such factors are absent. Secondly, emphasis on “social” in contradistinction to “technical” can lead to the disproportionate selection of events for analysis which appear to exemplify “mistaken” or “wrong” science. As we shall show, an important feature of fact construction is the process whereby “social” factors disappear once a fact is established. Since scientists themselves preferentially retain (or resurrect) the existence of “social” factors where things scientific are thought to have gone wrong, the adoption of the same viewpoint by an observer will necessarily lead him to the analysis of the way social factors affect, or have given rise to, “wrong” beliefs.

The idea of natural selection as genius in slow motion became to biologists part of the very definition of life, and with this elevated status came immunity from criticism. To question the most central axiom of modern biology was, and is, to excuse oneself from the company of modern biologists.

What one observes is a horde of uneducated and inflammatory dunderheads, eager for power, intolerant of opposition and full of a childish vanity—a mob of holy clerks but little raised, in intelligence and dignity, above the forlorn half-wits whose souls they chronically rack. In the whole United States there is scarcely one among them who stands forth as a man of sense and information. Illiterate in all save the elementals, untouched by the larger currents of thought, drunk with their power over dolts, crazed by their immunity to challenge by their betters, they carry over into the professional class of the country the spirit of the most stupid peasantry, and degrade religion to the estate of an idiotic phobia. There is not a village in America in which some such preposterous jackass is not in eruption. Worse, he is commonly the leader of its opinion—its pattern in reason, morals and good taste. Yet worse, he is ruler as well as pattern. Wrapped in his sacerdotal cloak, he stands above any effective criticism. To question his imbecile ideas is to stand in contumacy of the revelation of God.

Symptoms of poor sympathetic response include suffering from chronic high blood pressure that puts more “wear and tear” on the heart (men are already three times more likely to have cardiovascular disease), disruption of immune function (even making it attack itself with “autoimmune disease”), poor digestion and gut health that blocks needed nutrient absorption,2 poor critical thinking skills and even faster aging.

We all get blocked. We are all plagued by an inner critic. And no one is immune to the creativity-halting effects of negative criticism.

The death fat is that fat tire inside, the IAF. Why? In 1970, a Big Food scientist at a company under the New Jersey Turnpike found the ‘bliss point’ for humans, the perfect combo of refined sugar, salt, and fat that was optimally addictive to humans—junk food. The reason you die from eating at the bliss point is that the inside fat tire grows and grows and provokes inflammation in the body, and that sounds the alarm for the immune system to rush at it all the time, but it keeps on growing and growing until at a critical moment it outgrows the blood supply and the bloodless fat cells die—really quickly die—and this attracts the macrophages, which migrate to the abdominal fat and eat up the dead cells and kind of circle the wagons.

It kills sacred cows - This is content that proves wrong popular myths and beliefs that are immune to criticism or questions.

your body can repair itself better when it isn’t constantly diverting energy to digestion. Third, fasting causes major changes in several crucial hormones that impact aging and weight, including insulin and growth hormone. Fourth, fasting is one of those hormetic “small stresses” that stimulate the longevity gene pathways. Fifth—and this is big—fasting kicks in autophagy, the cellular detox process critical to strong immunity and aging well. So here’s the plan: A couple of times a week, have dinner on the early side, and the first meal the next day a little later, leaving a good 16 hours in between.

But between ages 45 and 65, it’s more important to eat less meat and dairy than it is to go crazy with protein. A person in this age range weighing 150 pounds needs about 55 grams of protein a day. Most people get this amount without too much effort. After age 65, protein becomes extremely important. At this point, your body needs more protein, to combat sarcopenia—loss of muscle mass—which is just a natural part of life (see Maintaining muscle mass is critical for more on this). So you want to increase your protein intake by about 25 percent: A 150-pound person who’s 65 or over should aim for about 70 grams of protein a day. This, combined with exercise, especially strength training, helps minimize the loss of muscle mass.

If Benartzi and Thaler are right, the implication is critical: Long-term investors (individuals who evaluate their portfolios infrequently) are willing to pay more for an identical risky asset than short-term investors (frequent evaluation). Valuation depends on your time horizon. This may be why many long-term investors say they don’t care about volatility. Immune to short-term squiggles, these investors hold stocks long enough to get an attractive probability of a return and, hence, a positive utility.

As Hamas’s rocket stockpiles dwindled, it reduced the number of rockets launched nightly but increased the range to Tel Aviv and beyond. Several of my conversations with Obama were interrupted by sirens. “Sorry, Barack,” I’d say. “I’m afraid we’ll have to resume our conversation in a few minutes.” With the rest of the staff I had forty-five seconds to go into underground shelters, returning after getting the all-clear sign. These live interruptions strengthened my argument for taking increasingly powerful actions against Hamas. And so we did. The IAF destroyed more and more enemy targets. Hamas panicked and became careless. Our intelligence identified the locations of their commanders. We targeted them and delivered painful blows to their hierarchy. Hamas then shifted their command posts to high-rises, believing they would be immune to our strikes. Using a technique called “knock on roof,” the air force fired nonlethal warning shots on the roofs of the buildings. Along with phone calls to the building occupants, these warnings enabled them to leave the premises unharmed. The IDF flattened several high-rise buildings with no civilian casualties. The sight of these collapsing towers sent Hamas a powerful message of demoralization and fear. This was literally “you can climb but you can’t hide.” Desperation was seeping through Hamas ranks. Arguments began to flare between Mashal in Qatar and the ground command in Gaza, which was suffering the brunt of our attacks. Eventually they caved. In the talks with Egypt they rescinded all their demands and agreed to an unconditional cease-fire that went into effect on August 26, 2014. After fifty days, Protective Edge was over. Sixty-seven IDF soldiers, five Israeli civilians, including one child, and a Thai civilian working in Israel lost their lives in the war. There were 4,564 rockets and mortars fired at Israel from Gaza, nearly all from civilian neighborhoods. The Iron Dome system intercepted 86 percent of them.4 The IDF killed 2,125 Gazans,5 roughly two-thirds of whom were members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terrorist groups. A third were civilians who were often used by the terrorists as human shields. Colonel Richard Kemp, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “the IDF took measures to limit civilian casualties never taken by any Western army in similar situations.” At least twenty-three Palestinian civilians were executed by Hamas over false accusations of colluding with Israel. In reality many had simply criticized the devastation of Gaza brought about by Hamas’s aggression against Israel.6 Hamas leaders emerged from their bunkers. Surveying the rubble, they predictably declared victory. This is what all dictatorships do. They are not accountable to the facts or to their people. Less predictably, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas admitted that Hamas was severely weakened and achieved none of its demands.7 With the

So I suppose that the real difference between the Spartans and us is that their moral education enjoins them to hold their most important ideas immune from criticism. Not to be open to suggestions. Not to criticize certain ideas such as their traditions or their conceptions of the gods; not to seek the truth, because they claim that they already have it.

Before the Enlightenment, bad philosophy was the rule and good philosophy the rare exception. With the Enlightenment came much more good philosophy, but bad philosophy became much worse, with the descent from empiricism (merely false) to positivism, logical positivism, instrumentalism, Wittgenstein, linguistic philosophy, and the ‘postmodernist’ and related movements. In science, the main impact of bad philosophy has been through the idea of separating a scientific theory into (explanationless) predictions and (arbitrary) interpretation. This has helped to legitimize dehumanizing explanations of human thought and behaviour. In quantum theory, bad philosophy manifested itself mainly as the Copenhagen interpretation and its many variants, and as the ‘shut-up-and-calculate’ interpretation. These appealed to doctrines such as logical positivism to justify systematic equivocation and to immunize themselves from criticism.

What Writing Can Help Us Do: Name our experience so we can more fully understand it. Give language to the future we want to create so it stops feeling vague and begins to seem achievable. Build a bridge (neural pathways) between the now we’re experiencing and the future we’d like to create. Heal and engineer our own resilience from past experience. Find perspective for life’s challenges, large and small. Invent brand-new solutions for age-old problems. Build our confidence. Increase our working memory and overall cognitive power. Cultivate more gratitude and contentment. Provide clarity for our decisions. Increase satisfaction in our romantic partnerships. Level up our immune system, help us sleep better, etc. Combat and curb anxiety, stress, and depression. Tune out the well-meaning and critical voices around us so we can finally understand what we think.

the sovereign state of exception is a politico-theological weapon designed to neutralise the threat posed not so much by liberalism but by more radical forms of politics, especially anarchism. Curiously enough, the state of exception – the condition in which the rule of law is suspended – itself resembles a form of anarchy, perhaps what Hannah Arendt referred to as the ‘anarchy of power’ that characterised totalitarian regimes. However, Schmitt is quick to distinguish the exception from anarchy and chaos: order in the juristic sense still prevails, even if it is, he says ominously, ‘not of the ordinary kind’. This is a kind of artificially induced ‘anarchy’, designed to preserve rather than overthrow the existing order, or – as we saw in Schmitt’s welcoming of the Nazi revolution – overthrowing it in order to preserve it. To borrow the concept of ‘immunisation’ from the theorist Roberto Esposito, the exception might be seen as gesture in which, in order to protect oneself from a virus, one injects oneself with it so that the system’s immune response is triggered. In the same way, to immunise itself against the threat of anarchy, the state suspends the rule of law and becomes ‘anarchic

Just as not requiring a child to reason critically will stunt her intellect, not stressing a child's bones, muscles and immune systems will fail to match these organ's capacities to their demands.

Chronic patterns of self-hate, guilt, and self-criticism raise the body’s stress levels and weaken the immune system.

No company, no matter how great, is immune to the potential doom loop of misaligned incentives and the wrong people in key seats on the bus. The doom loop begins when you get some of the wrong people on the bus who behave contrary to your company’s core values and degrade the culture. Some of these people then become powerful enough to install incentives that are misaligned with the core values. This reinforces the behavior of the wrong people and drives away the right people. The culture becomes increasingly dominated by the wrong people and increasingly inhospitable to the right people. More of the right people get off the bus, and the proportion of wrong people increases to a critical mass. And then one day, you wake up to the horrifying realization that the culture you’ve carefully cultivated has been destroyed.

Growing up, when I observed the Republicans and thought, “Whatever my problems with the Left, the Right is definitely not for me,” I wasn’t entirely wrong. The Republican Party I grew up with was, for the most part, what I thought it was. But I was missing the real story. I mistakenly thought that what I objected to was “the Right.” But the Right wasn’t the problem. The problem was the Lower Right. The problem wasn’t too much conservatism, it was too little conservatism. I hadn’t understood that high-rung conservatism is a critical part of a healthy country and that the Republican Party I knew was actually depriving my country of it. I also mistakenly thought that, since the problem was on the right, there could never be reason to worry about the other side of the spectrum. But the low rungs span the whole political spectrum, and the vortex affects the whole country. I didn’t understand at the time that the same ecosystem changes that had disabled the high-rung immune system on the right could do the very same thing much closer to home.

A vague notion has developed that it is bad form to criticize someone's religion, and, by extension, religion in general. To be sure, those well informed in history can only look with bemused horror at how the devotees of one religion, for hundreds or thousands of years, persecuted the devotees of other religions, or even "heretics" within their own religion; and it certainly does seem absurd nowadays to engage in this kind of disputation, especially given that one religion is no more likely to be true than another. We are in an age of "toleration" and ecumenicalism-a somewhat paradoxical development, at least in the West, given that the scriptures of each of the major religions of Europe and the Middle East (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) clearly and unequivocally declares that it and it alone possesses the truth about God and the universe. But surely it is still a valid procedure to assess the truth-claims of any given religion or all religions, and to determine whether their scriptures do or do not provide accurate information about human beings, human society, or the universe at large. Religions themselves have craftily put forth this hands-off principle precisely in order to shield themselves from scrutiny by pestiferous critics. Listen again to H. L. Mencken: ... even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.... The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk, and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism. Any fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible. Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us.

I could never decide whether Tim’s dry sense of humor was a defense mechanism or whether he was as truly immune as he seemed to the stress and criticism that came with his high-profile jobs.