Inconsistent Family Quotes

If you have feelings for someone, let them know. It doesn’t matter if they can be in your life or not. Maybe, it is just enough for both of you to release the truth, so healing can occur. The opposite is true, as well. If you don’t have feelings for someone then never let another person suggest that you do. Protect your reputation and be responsible for the wrong information spread about you. Never allow anyone to live with a false belief or unfounded hope about you. An honorable person sets the record straight, so that person can move on with their life.

My whole life I wanted to be normal. Everybody knows there's no such thing as normal. There is no black-and-white definition of normal. Normal is subjective. There's only messy, inconsistant, silly, hopeful version of how we feel most at home in our own lives. But when I think about what I have, what I strived to reach my whole life, it's not the biggest or best or easiest or prettiest or most anything. It's not the Manor or the laundry closet. Not the multi-million dollar inheritance or the poorhouse. It's not superstardom or unemployment. It's family and love and safety. It's bravery and hope. It's work and laughter and imperfection. It's my normal.

The emptiness of the narcissist often means that they are only focused on whatever is useful or interesting to them at the moment. If at that moment it is interesting for them to tell you they love you, they do. It’s not really a long game to them, and when the next interesting issue comes up, they attend to that. The objectification of others—viewing other people as objects useful to his needs—can also play a role. When you are the only thing in the room, or the most interesting thing in the room, then the narcissist’s charisma and charm can leave you convinced that you are his everything. The problem is that this is typically superficial regard, and that superficiality results in inconsistency, and emotions for the narcissistic person range from intense to detached on a regular basis. This vacillation between intensity and detachment can be observed in the narcissist’s relationships with people (acquaintances, friends, family, and partners), work, and experiences. A healthy relationship should feel like a safe harbor in your life. Life throws us enough curve balls in the shape of money problems, work issues, medical issues, household issues, and even the weather. Sadly, a relationship with a narcissist can be one more source of chaos in your life, rather than a place of comfort and consistency.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18) I came from a family of wonderful people who nevertheless struggled with how to be happy. There were many things we didn't know about living in peace. We mixed our love with fear. What I experienced in my childhood family seemed to color my life with confusion. I joined the Church at nineteen. Though my conversion was real, many of my emotions continued to be out of harmony with gospel teachings, and I didn't know what to do about them. I was not at rest. As a young mother I felt that I was only barely keeping my distress from leaking out. But it did leak out. I struggled to be cheerful at home. I was too often tense with my children, especially as their behavior reflected negatively on me. I was perfectionistic. I was irritable and controlling. But I was also loving, patient, appreciative, happy; I frequently felt the Spirit of the Lord, and I did many parenting things well, but so inconsistently. Sooner or later the crisis comes for good people who live in ignorance and neglect of spiritual law. The old ways don't work anymore, and it may feel as though the foundations of life are giving way. If we don't learn consistent, mature love in our childhood homes we often struggle to learn it when we become marriage partners and parents.

I wept for my family, all if us, my beautiful, idyllic, lost family. I wept for our excesses, our delusions and inconsistencies; not that we had cared too much or too little, although both were true, but that we had let such extraordinary care be subverted into extraordinary carelessness. We'd been careless with the best of our many resources: each other. It was as though we had taken for granted the fact that there would be more where we had come from too; another chance, another summer, another Brooke, Bridget or Bill.

(The false self occurs when people are forced to comply with external expectations, such as being polite or looking attractive, when such expectations might be inconsistent with who they really are and how they would ordinarily act or feel. Over time, living in a perpetual false-self state can become extremely unhealthy as the person loses his or her sense of genuine self.)

...when the bullets fly and sundry erratic fragments of shell are seeking a fellowʼs life, and he has to lay low in the pits to keep his light from being snuffed out, then is a good opportunity to reckon up and balance accounts with the world in general and a fellowʼs near relatives and family in particular. Many, many, many a time have I thought of the careless word or deed never recalled, or amended, and during those midnight hours would I have given almost life itself to have the opportunity of making amends for them. Not through fear of what is beyond this life, but in order that after my flesh had turned to dust, and my bones to traces of white lime, those that knew me in life could say, “Charlie is gone, and though his life was full of inconsistencies, still he was a good hearted fellow, and if he did not amount to much as man, still he done no one any harm.” Charlie Biddlecom January 22, 1865

I want to love him but I often find myself wishing he could just be an asshole all the time. This way I wouldn't have all these inner battles with myself. I learn to navigate my way through shattered expectations and constant disappointments by putting an impenetrable wall up between us. Every time I let my guard down, I'm quickly reminded why my defenses were up in the first place. It's nearly impossible for me to flourish in an inconsistent hostile environment, especially when my own growth is so intertwined with his. I'm forced to face the unsettling reality that the people who are supposed to protect us are sometimes the same people we need protection from.

It’s the people whom she now belongs to, the family who’ve encircled her so completely. And it’s the person she discovered she was, underneath all the neat piles and careful planning. She was never really that person. She made herself into that person to counterbalance her mother’s inconsistencies. To fit in at school. To fit in with a group of friends whose values she never really shared, not really, not deep down inside. There is more to her than arm’s-length friendships and stupidly proscriptive Tinder requirements. She is the product of better people than her fantasy birth parents, the graphic designer and the fashion PR with the sports car and the tiny dogs. How unimaginative she’d been.

Al-Hakim was wildly inconsistent, founding a Dar al-Ilm – House of Knowledge – similar to al-Mamun’s House of Wisdom – where not only Ismaili theology but astronomy and philosophy were taught in sessions that he himself often attended. But once Barjawan was gone al-Hakim seems to have believed that tolerance had displeased God. In 1004, noticing rich Christian caravans setting off for Jerusalem, he started executing Christians and converting churches into mosques. On hearing of the frenzied Christian rite of the Holy Fire that took place every Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he banned Christmas, Epiphany and Easter, and wine drinking as well. Then he ordered that Jews and Christians wear distinguishing clothing, a Jew a wooden cow-yoke (and in the baths a cowbell) and Christians a cross. Jews and Christians were ordered to convert or die; many pretended to convert.

A sincere man who sits down at night and pens that which his soul believes to be right, that which his soul tells him will be good for humanity, is exercising a power over the world that is beneficial. We should hail that expression of greatness, of goodness, with thanksgiving. But the insincere man, the man who will sit down at night and distort facts, who will wilfully misrepresent truth, who is a traitor to the divine within him which is calling, nay longing for truth, what shall we say of that man? He is publishing falsehoods to the world, giving poison to young, innocent souls who are longing for truth. Oh, there is no condemnation too strong for the hypocrite, for the betrayer of Christ. We will not condemn him, but God will, in His justice; He must. Too much time is taken up by our young people, and by our older ones, too, in reading useless pamphlets, useless books; "It is worse than useless," says Farrar, in that excellent little work on "Great Books:". . . . Men in Israel, it is time that we take a stand against vile literature. It is poisonous to the soul. It is the duty of a parent to put the poison, that is in the house, on the highest shelf, away from that innocent little child who knows not the danger of it. It is the duty of the parent also to keep the boy's mind from becoming polluted with the vile trash that is sometimes scattered--nay, that is daily distributed among us. There is inconsistency in a man's kneeling down with his family in prayer, and asking God to bless the leader of our Church, and then put into the hands of the boy, who was kneeling there, a paper that calls the leader a hypocrite. It ought not to be done; it is poison to the soul. How can we tell? May be those are the great men who are writing the scurrilous articles, and these whom they attack are not the great men? Some may say: Give the children an opportunity to hear both sides. Yes, that is all well and good; but if a man were to come into your home and say to you that your mother is not a good woman, you would know he lied; wouldn't you? And you wouldn't let your children hear him. If a man came and told you that your brother was dishonest, and you had been with him all your life and knew him to be honest, you would know the man lied. So when they come and tell you the Gospel is a hypocritical doctrine, taught by this organization, when they tell you the men at the head are insincere, you know they lie; and you can take the same firm stand on that, being sincere yourself as you could in regard to your mother and brother. Teach your children, your boys and girls everywhere, to keep away from every bad book and all bad literature, especially that which savors of hatred, or envy, or malice, that which bears upon it the marks of hypocrisy, insincerity, edited by men who have lost their manhood.

The secret—to being you, to being Happy?” “Just keep on smiling. Even when you’re sad. Keep on smiling.” Not the most profound advice, admittedly. But Happy is wise, for only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. To venture any further, though, is to enter treacherous waters. A slippery seal, happiness is. On the road, I encountered bushels of inconsistencies. The Swiss are uptight and happy. The Thais are laid-back and happy. Icelanders find joy in their binge drinking, Moldovans only misery. Maybe an Indian mind can digest these contradictions, but mine can’t. Exasperated, I call one of the leading happiness researchers, John Helliwell. Perhaps he has some answers. “It’s simple,” he says. “There’s more than one path to happiness.” Of course. How could I have missed it? Tolstoy turned on his head. All miserable countries are alike; happy ones are happy in their own ways. It’s worth considering carbon. We wouldn’t be here without it. Carbon is the basis of all life, happy and otherwise. Carbon is also a chameleon atom. Assemble it one way—in tight, interlocking rows—and you have a diamond. Assemble it another way—a disorganized jumble—and you have a handful of soot. The arranging makes all the difference. Places are the same. It’s not the elements that matter so much as how they’re arranged and in which proportions. Arrange them one way, and you have Switzerland. Arrange them another way, and you have Moldova. Getting the balance right is important. Qatar has too much money and not enough culture. It has no way of absorbing all that cash. And then there is Iceland: a country that has no right to be happy yet is. Iceland gets the balance right. A small country but a cosmopolitan one. Dark and light. Efficient and laid-back. American gumption married to European social responsibility. A perfect, happy arrangement. The glue that holds the entire enterprise together is culture. It makes all the difference. I have some nagging doubts about my journey. I didn’t make it everywhere. Yet my doubts extend beyond matters of itinerary. I wonder if happiness is really the highest good, as Aristotle believed. Maybe Guru-ji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, is right. Maybe love is more important than happiness. Certainly, there are times when happiness seems beside the point. Ask a single, working mother if she is happy, and she’s likely to reply, “You’re not asking the right question.” Yes, we want to be happy but for the right reasons, and,

However, it is also true that sometimes people are transformed by their marriages in negative and hostile ways. I think this occurs as an attempt to resolve what Leon Festinger in 1957 referred to as cognitive dissonance. Festinger writes that we’re all powerfully driven to experience ourselves as consistent in our thought processes. As a result, if we become aware of an inconsistency in our beliefs, we’ll change one or more of the beliefs to make them more internally consistent. How might the theory of cognitive dissonance explain why Sam changed from being a kind and considerate family member to being critical and angry? Here’s how the shift in personality might work: Belief: My parents and sisters are good people who deserve my love and respect. Belief: Maria hates my family and thinks they brainwashed me into thinking that they were good to me when they really weren’t. Since Sam loves both his family and Maria, he’s in a quandary. If he remains committed to Maria, he’ll produce endless fights by disagreeing with her or pushing her into being more involved with his family; she has already said that she doesn’t like them and doesn’t feel comfortable being in their presence. He will also feel guilt toward Maria if he remains in contact with them, as she’s made it clear that he needs to choose her over him and being close to them is therefore a betrayal of her. Since Sam has to come home to Maria each night, his path of least cognitive dissonance is to accept her version of his parents as the correct one.

Do you ever find yourself reminiscing about the girl you used to be? I used to do it all the time, and depending on my mood – I’d either smile or cringe. I went through phases where, on the outside, I was the ‘everything’s gonna be okay’ type of girl. I comforted my friends and family. I was intelligent, confident, and strong, but in private, I hated myself. You see, I was adopted into what many consider the perfect family, and while I can say that I was raised in a loving home, there still wasn't enough love in the world that could’ve convinced me that I was enough. There wasn’t enough love in the world to make me believe I was loveable. Although my adoptive parents gave me all of their love, there wasn’t enough love in the world that could make me stop craving the love of my birth mother. It's taken me a very long time to accept myself. It’s taken years to win the war between who I am versus the crippling insecurities that made me hate myself. I’d love to be the perfect woman without flaws or insecurities, but this isn’t Barbie’s Dreamhouse. So, I apologize in advance for my inconsistency, at times. I apologize in advance for my mood swings. I apologize in advance for my immaturity. I apologize for my stupidity. I apologize for my moments of low self-esteem. I apologize for my lingering self-doubt. And I apologize for believing that I wasn’t good enough. I’m still a work in progress, and one day, I’ll even be confident enough to stop apologizing, but in the meantime, please bear with me. Growth doesn’t always happen in a straight line, nor does it happen overnight, so I thank you in advance for this difficult journey that we're about to embark on together, and I hope you can grow to love me as I’ve finally grown to love myself.

Control is as essential to adults with Asperger syndrome as air to breathe. Keeping control is the only way they feel they can survive in a complex world full of mixed emotions and inconsistent feelings, all of which are a complete mystery to them. They have to try and interpret a language they have no knowledge of; there are no guidebooks on the unspoken word.

Movie stars didn’t become irrelevant, but they became very inconsistent in attracting an audience. People used to go to almost any movie with Tom Cruise in it. Between 1992 and 2006, Cruise starred in twelve films that each grossed more than $100 million domestically. He was on an unparalleled streak, with virtually no flops. But in the decade since then, five of Cruise’s nine movies—Knight and Day, Rock of Ages, Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow, and The Mummy—were box-office disappointments. This was an increasingly common occurrence for A-listers. Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller couldn’t convince anyone to see Zoolander 2. Brad Pitt didn’t attract audiences to Allied. Virtually nobody wanted to see Sandra Bullock in Our Brand Is Crisis. It’s not that they were being replaced by a new generation of stars. Certainly Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt and Kevin Hart and Melissa McCarthy have risen in popularity in recent years, but outside of major franchises like The Hunger Games and Jurassic World, their box-office records are inconsistent as well. What happened? Audiences’ loyalties shifted. Not to other stars, but to franchises. Today, no person has the box-office track record that Cruise once did, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone will again. But Marvel Studios does. Harry Potter does. Fast & Furious does. Moviegoers looking for the consistent, predictable satisfaction they used to get from their favorite stars now turn to cinematic universes. Any movie with “Jurassic” in the title is sure to feature family-friendly adventures on an island full of dinosaurs, no matter who plays the human roles. Star vehicles are less predictable because stars themselves get older, they make idiosyncratic choices, and thanks to the tabloid media, our knowledge of their personal failings often colors how we view them onscreen (one reason for Cruise’s box-office woes has been that many women turned on him following his failed marriage to Katie Holmes).

special acknowledgments 1. my sun & rain, who believed i could write this even when i didn't. 1. my father, who probably didn't know i was a writer but will hopefully be proud of me for writing this. 1. my sister-savior, who wouldn't imagine giving up on me even in the darkest of times. 1. the rest of my family, who always encouraged me to keep moving forward even if it meant pushing me out of my comfort zone. 1. my beta readers (christine, mira, danika, shauna, rob, mason & lauren), who cried while reading this & — most importantly — pointed out my inconsistencies & corrected most of my grammar mistakes.

The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience. Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistency.”3 I AM TOLD OVER AND OVER IN SCRIPTURE THAT MY DUTY AS A CHRISTIAN IS TO BECOME MORE AND MORE LIKE JESUS CHRIST.

There is a different practice of devotion for the gentleman and the mechanic; for the prince and the servant; for the wife, the maiden, and the widow; and still further, the practice of devotion must be adapted to the capabilities, the engagements, and the duties of each individual. It would not do were the bishop to adopt a Carthusian solitude, or if the father of a family refused like the Capuchins to save money. . . . Such devotion would be inconsistent and ridiculous. . . . It is not merely an error but a heresy to suppose that a devout life is necessarily banished from the soldier’s camp, the merchant’s shop, the prince’s court, or the domestic hearth. . . . Lot remained chaste whilst in Sodom, and fell into sin after he had forsaken it. Wheresoever we may be, we may and should aim at a life of perfect devotion.

Creative expression of the artistically elite is grossly overvalued and creative expression of the general population is grossly undervalued. This is dangerous. The part of our beings that has no voice, perhaps or other hemisphere, needs a vehicle for expression. Without such a vehicle, expression is likely to come through action that is often violent and destructive instead of creative. Over the years, many questions have arisen about the connection between creativity and madness, the artist and the madman. Both the artist and the madman speak a tongue that has become foreign to the rest of us. The mad person is to his or her family what the artist is to the culture, containing what is hidden, secret, denied, and disassociated and trying with more or less desperation to reveal vital secrets to us all. The mad person—the person we would now call a victim of trauma—has always symbolically pointed out the discrepancies, inconsistencies, and lies in the family.

Fight with them, humor them, call them on their inconsistencies. Love them, make mistakes, and love them again. That’s what families did.

Inconsistency isn’t the only way parents make themselves unavailable. Sometimes parents remove themselves entirely and are physically or emotionally unavailable.

Tempting Christ is demanding that God do what is contrary to His will, or inconsistent with His character.

As the research shows, if a parent, especially a mother, is inconsistent in praise, acknowledgment, and expressions of love, the child may suffer from a lack of self-esteem and be more vulnerable to depression.

Some people are like chameleons, changing their colors to blend in with their surroundings. They shower you with love and affection when no one is watching, but as soon as their family and friends appear, they transform into strangers, leaving you feeling invisible and ignored. Remember, true love and friendship are consistent and unconditional, not situational and convenient." This quote highlights the inconsistency and hypocrisy of people who only show love and care when it's convenient for them, but abandon and ignore you when it's no longer beneficial to their social status or relationships with others.

Let me say at once that I am no advocate for a foolish cosmopolitanism. I believe that a man must be a good patriot before he can be, and as the only possible way of being, a good citizen of the world. Experience teaches us that the average man who protests that his international feeling swamps his national feeling, that he does not care for his country because he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proves himself the foe of mankind; that the man who says that he does not care to be a citizen of any one country, because he is the citizen of the world, is in fact usually an exceedingly undesirable citizen of whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in. In the dim future all moral needs and moral standards may change; but at present, if a man can view his own country and all other countries from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrust him, just as it is wise to distrust the man who can take the same dispassionate view of his wife and mother. However broad and deep a man’s sympathies, however intense his activities, he need have no fear that they will be cramped by love of his native land. Now, this does not mean in the least that a man should not wish to do good outside of his native land. On the contrary, just as I think that the man who loves his family is more apt to be a good neighbor than the man who does not, so I think that the most useful member of the family of nations is normally a strongly patriotic nation. So far from patriotism being inconsistent with a proper regard for the rights of other nations, I hold that the true patriot, who is as jealous of national honor as a gentleman of his own honor, will be careful to see that the nations neither inflect nor suffer wrong, just as a gentleman scorns equally to wrong others or to suffer others to wrong him. I do not for one moment admit that a man should act deceitfully as a public servant in his dealing with other nations, any more than he should act deceitfully in his dealings as a private citizen with other private citizens. I do not for one moment admit that a nation should treat other nations in a different spirit from that in which an honorable man would treat other men.

The modern “nuclear” family is a psychological and moral disaster. It is a prison of sexual repression, a playing field of inconsistent moral laxity, a museum of possessiveness, a guilt-producing factory, and a school of selfishness.

We spend the first couple of decades of our lives trying to figure out who the hell we are. Some people never find out. They keep searching and searching and searching. Or they’ll be different people with everyone. Never any consistent presentation of who they are. But if we can realize by our mid-twenties who we are, we have to ask ourselves this question: Do we like who we are? If the answer is yes, then we should spend the rest of our lives maintaining who we are. If you think about it, it’s that maintenance of self that is constantly attacked, challenged, or compromised on a day-to-day basis—not just in the business, but in life. It’s what gives you the hills and the valleys. But if you can maintain who you are, then you become a magnet of consistency to which all the inconsistent elements spinning around in your little hemisphere are drawn. Those elements—the clients, people in the office, your family—want to know who they are. Your consistency can bring the same to their lives, and if it does, they’re going to want to stick with you. It worked for me. After nineteen months I was promoted to agent. As for the people who didn’t work hard, they were still in the mailroom. I was right and they were wrong. What I try to give to trainees today is an understanding of the business and what it means to have power. There are two kinds of power. Your primary power is your character and your integrity. Your secondary power is your learned skills: your people skills, what you do to make a living, what you learned in college, what you’ve learned in dealing with other people. You must, in order to be totally successful, have control of both sets of power. If I ask the question “What does it mean to be thoughtfully political?” the answer, other than “Being kind,” is “To think.” Think about what you want. Then think about the people who are going to help get it for you. Then be political and figure out how to make those people happy about giving you what you want. That’s what it’s always been about for me. If you can do that, you can do anything. That is the whole secret to Sam Haskell. I don’t believe in the pursuit of power. When it is earned and deserved, it’s just there. It’s just got to happen as the result of other actions that you take. Whatever power I have is only because I’ve lived my life the right way, I’ve worked hard, I’ve had character and integrity in everything I do.

The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience. Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistency.

To quote Charles Spurgeon, I trust there are none here present, who profess to be followers of Christ who do not also practice prayer in their families. We may have no positive commandment for it, but we believe that it is so much in accord with the genius and spirit of the gospel, and that it is so commended by the example of the saints, that the neglect thereof is a strange inconsistency.1

Your baby will likely cry less at sleep onset using this method if Dad is the one putting her down after soothing and Mom has left the house. This is for two reasons. First, your baby knows that Dad cannot nurse, so what is the point of crying? Second, moms are usually more sleep deprived and therefore likely to be inconsistent with the schedule. Mom might go for a walk, get a cup of coffee, or hang out with friends until Dad calls to tell her that the baby is asleep. Some mothers leave not just at bedtime but spend the entire first night away at a friend’s or at a hotel to get some much-needed rest and sleep. If affordable, one night of pampering self-maintenance at a spa hotel is a smart idea for the family and not selfish. Other

Individuals say they are working so hard for the family, but as they work so hard there is less and less time for the family, and family life deteriorates. Somehow, the means prove inconsistent with the stated end. T

Taking quick looks behind him on the trail, Lew Basnight was apt to see things that weren’t necessarily there. Mounted figure in a black duster and hat, always still, turned sidewise in the hard, sunlit distance, horse bent to the barren ground. No real beam of attention, if anything a withdrawal into its own lopsided star-shaped silhouette, as if that were all it had ever aspired to. It did not take long to convince himself that the presence behind him now, always just out of eyeball range, belonged to one and the same subject, the notorious dynamiter of the San Juans known as the Kieselguhr Kid. The Kid happened to be of prime interest to White City Investigations. Just around the time Lew was stepping off the train at the Union Station in Denver, and the troubles up in the Coeur d’Alene were starting to bleed over everywhere in the mining country, where already hardly a day passed without an unscheduled dynamite blast in it someplace, the philosophy among larger, city-based detective agencies like Pinkerton’s and Thiel’s began to change, being as they now found themselves with far too much work on their hands. On the theory that they could look at their unsolved cases the way a banker might at instruments of debt, they began selling off to less-established and accordingly hungrier outfits like White City their higher-risk tickets, including that of the long-sought Kieselguhr Kid. It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite. The Kid’s family had supposedly come over as refugees from Germany shortly after the reaction of 1849, settling at first near San Antonio, which the Kid-to-be, having developed a restlessness for higher ground, soon left, and then after a spell in the Sangre de Cristos, so it went, heading west again, the San Juans his dream, though not for the silver-mine money, nor the trouble he could get into, both of those, he was old enough by then to appreciate, easy enough to come by. No, it was for something else. Different tellers of the tale had different thoughts on what. “Don’t carry pistols, don’t own a shotgun nor a rifle—no, his trade-mark, what you’ll find him packing in those tooled holsters, is always these twin sticks of dynamite, with a dozen more—” “Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest.” “Easy fellow to recognize, then.” “You’d think so, but no two eyewitnesses have ever agreed. It’s like all that blasting rattles it loose from everybody’s memory.” “But say, couldn’t even a slow hand just gun him before he could get a fuse lit?” “Wouldn’t bet on it. Got this clever wind-proof kind of striker rig on to each holster, like a safety match, so all’s he has to do’s draw, and the ‘sucker’s all lit and ready to throw.” “Fast fuses, too. Some boys down the Uncompahgre found out about that just last August, nothin left to bury but spurs and belt buckles. Even old Butch Cassidy and them’ll begin to coo like a barn full of pigeons whenever the Kid’s in the county.” Of course, nobody ever’d been sure about who was in Butch Cassidy’s gang either. No shortage of legendary deeds up here, but eyewitnesses could never swear beyond a doubt who in each case, exactly, had done which, and, more than fear of retaliation—it was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing not only aliases to be inconsistently assigned but identity itself to change. Did something, something essential, happen to human personality above a certain removal from sea level? Many quoted Dr. Lombroso’s observation about how lowland folks tended to be placid and law-abiding while mountain country bred revolutionaries and outlaws. That was over in Italy, of course. Theorizers about the recently discovered subconscious mind, reluctant to leave out any variable that might seem helpful, couldn’t avoid the altitude, and the barometric pressure that went with it. This was spirit, after all.

Children from troubled or dysfunctional families grow up not knowing what is “normal,” healthy or appropriate. Having no other reference point on which to test reality, they think their family and their life, with its inconsistency, its trauma and its pain, is “the way it is.” In fact, when we assume the role of our false self, which troubled families, friendships and work environments tend to promote, we become fixed in this role—we don’t realize there is any other way to be. In recovery, with appropriate supervision and feedback from skilled and safe others, we slowly learn what is healthy and what is appropriate. Other related issues include: being overly-responsible, neglecting our own needs, feelings, boundary issues and shame and low self-esteem.

Armies, like families, are institutions that create a world. Both successfully engender the new member's respect, loyalty, love, affirmation, gratitude, and obedience. I speak of armies and families as creating social power, because the hold that each of these institutions has over its members comes to greatly exceed its moment-to-moment capacity to reward or punish and usually persists long after significant practical affiliation has ended. The following features are common to both of these world-making institutions, whether the new member experiences them as benign or malevolent: Barriers to escape Control of body and bodily functions What and when to eath When, where, and how much to sleep Body form (clothing, weight, haircut) When and where to urinate and defecate Lack of privacy regarding bodily functions Prolonged daily contact with power-holder in group Power-holder as source of small rewards, comfort, approval Inconsistent, unpredictable, capricious enforcement of rules Monopolization of communication, resources, control Secrecy regarding some activities and events Lack of alternative to seeing world through power-holder's eyes Required repetition of buzz words, songs, slogans, cliches, even if inwardly disbelieved and rejected

The first driver is Novelty. If everyone has already heard of it and it is not novel, there is no reason to refer it to someone... You can actually have Novelty be present in some degree with almost any product, all the time, even old established products... It needs to give people a chance to tell their friends and family about this distinction that makes them look good, because their friends and family would not have heard of it before. ... The next aspect is Utility. In other words, will the majority of the people you mention it to have a use or need for it... Whenever possible it is best to target networks that are both broad and deep. A broad network is one with a large number of members. The more critical aspect however is depth; this represents the frequency of communication within this network or their structures for sharing information. An example of a network that is relatively quite deep would be golfers. Not only do fellow golfers frequently discuss their sport, they have magazines, television shows, newspaper columns and specific locations to indulge their interest. ... The third characteristic is Dependability. If something is seen as unreliable or inconsistent, you will not refer it. Why not? It would not make you look good. It is not that it is 100% failure free, but rather that it performs exactly as expected.... The fourth characteristic is Economy. Economy does not mean cheaper necessarily. It is just that it has a better value and you get more of what you wanted out of it. Very often what you get out of Economy is image. We are not really buying products and services, we are shopping for approval.... Strangely, a Hummer is going to be economical for some people. There are very few vehicles that get the kind of attention a Hummer gives.