Life Is Elsewhere Meaning Quotes

Revolution in Love’. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourgeois marriage, or monogamy as against bourgeois promiscuity?

I don't believe that there are any situations or any person on this planet who can not be helped, whose life can not be made better. And many of these situations can be cured. If your doctor does not know something, it does not mean that the knowledge does not exist elsewhere. No body is beyond hope. No body!

Harry’s letter to his daughter: If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it. The truth is simply this: No one owes you anything. Significance How could such a simple statement be important? It may not seem so, but understanding it can bless your entire life. No one owes you anything. It means that no one else is living for you, my child. Because no one is you. Each person is living for himself; his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel. When you realize that no one owes you happiness or anything else, you’ll be freed from expecting what isn’t likely to be. It means no one has to love you. If someone loves you, it’s because there’s something special about you that gives him happiness. Find out what that something special is and try to make it stronger in you, so that you’ll be loved even more. When people do things for you, it’s because they want to — because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything. No one has to like you. If your friends want to be with you, it’s not out of duty. Find out what makes others happy so they’ll want to be near you. No one has to respect you. Some people may even be unkind to you. But once you realize that people don’t have to be good to you, and may not be good to you, you’ll learn to avoid those who would harm you. For you don’t owe them anything either. Living your Life No one owes you anything. You owe it to yourself to be the best person possible. Because if you are, others will want to be with you, want to provide you with the things you want in exchange for what you’re giving to them. Some people will choose not to be with you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. When that happens, look elsewhere for the relationships you want. Don’t make someone else’s problem your problem. Once you learn that you must earn the love and respect of others, you’ll never expect the impossible and you won’t be disappointed. Others don’t have to share their property with you, nor their feelings or thoughts. If they do, it’s because you’ve earned these things. And you have every reason to be proud of the love you receive, your friends’ respect, the property you’ve earned. But don’t ever take them for granted. If you do, you could lose them. They’re not yours by right; you must always earn them. My Experience A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything. For so long as I’d thought there were things I was entitled to, I’d been wearing myself out —physically and emotionally — trying to collect them. No one owes me moral conduct, respect, friendship, love, courtesy, or intelligence. And once I recognized that, all my relationships became far more satisfying. I’ve focused on being with people who want to do the things I want them to do. That understanding has served me well with friends, business associates, lovers, sales prospects, and strangers. It constantly reminds me that I can get what I want only if I can enter the other person’s world. I must try to understand how he thinks, what he believes to be important, what he wants. Only then can I appeal to someone in ways that will bring me what I want. And only then can I tell whether I really want to be involved with someone. And I can save the important relationships for th

I believe that in matters of the heart there is no such thing as compromise. Love means that you give each other everything.

Yet,'said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, 'there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas - when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man's past and future, so that he can look backward and forward with complacency - why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation.

On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaningless. From Liz's point of view, the question of what her life would be was now definitively answered. The story of her life is short and pointless: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end.

Hard worker, punching the clock and paying the bills, you can live a life worthy this day. Your career may not involve “Christian-sanctioned” labor, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t walking in your calling. The manner in which you speak to your coworkers, the way you work diligently, your dignity as a laborer worth her wages—this is a worthy life. Every goodness God asked us to display is available to you today. Through ordinary work, people can be set free, valued, and changed, including yourself. God’s kingdom will not come in any more power elsewhere than it will come in your life today.

What are we after when we open one of those books? What is it that makes a classic a classic? ... in old-fashioned terms, the answer is that it wll elevate your spirit. And that's why I can't take much stock in the idea of going through a list of books or 'covering' a fixed number of selections, or anyway striving for the blessed state of having read this, or the other. Having read a book means nothing. Reading a book may be the most tremendous experience of your life; having read it is an item in your memory, part of your receding past... Why we have that odd faith in the magic of having read a book, I don't know. We don't apply the same principle elsewhere: We don't believe in having heard Mendelssohn's violin concerto... I say, don't read the classics -- try to discover your own classics; every life has its own.

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known—an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why. “In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot. But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die—in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love. I will die. You will die. The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us. What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust.

Unless you can refute the central argument of this book, you should now recognize that speciesism is wrong, and this means that, if you take morality seriously, you should try to eliminate speciesist practices from your own life, and oppose them elsewhere. Otherwise no basis remains from which you can, without hypocrisy, criticize racism or sexism.

To be detached from the world, (in the sense that Buddhist and Taoists and Hindus often talk about detachment), does not mean to be non-participative. By that I don't mean that you just go through doing everything mechanically and have your thoughts elsewhere. I mean a complete participation, but still detached. And the difference between the two attitudes is this.. On the one hand, there is a way of being so anxious about physical pleasure, so afraid that you won't make it, that you grab it too hard..that you just have to have that thing, and if you do that, you destroy it completely.. and therefore after every attempt to get it, you feel disappointed, you feel empty, you feel something was lost..and so you want it again, you have to keep repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating..because you never really got that. And it is this that's the hang up, this is what is meant by attachment to this world... But on the other hand, pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced, when one is grasping it.. I knew a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. She was so delighted with the bunny rabbit and so afraid of losing it, that taking it home in the car, she squeezed it to death with love. And lots of parents do that to their children. And lots of spouses do it to each other. They hold on too hard, and so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is. To have it, to have life, and to have its pleasure, you must at the same time let go of it.

Imagine the case of someone supervising an exceptional team of workers, all of them striving towards a collectively held goal; imagine them hardworking, brilliant, creative and unified. But the person supervising is also responsible for someone troubled, who is performing poorly, elsewhere. In a fit of inspiration, the well-meaning manager moves that problematic person into the midst of his stellar team, hoping to improve him by example. What happens?—and the psychological literature is clear on this point.64 Does the errant interloper immediately straighten up and fly right? No. Instead, the entire team degenerates. The newcomer remains cynical, arrogant and neurotic. He complains. He shirks. He misses important meetings. His low-quality work causes delays, and must be redone by others. He still gets paid, however, just like his teammates. The hard workers who surround him start to feel betrayed. “Why am I breaking myself into pieces striving to finish this project,” each thinks, “when my new team member never breaks a sweat?” The same thing happens when well-meaning counsellors place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability.65 Down is a lot easier than up.

I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space. This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos. And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be. So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.

My desire goes elsewhere: I dream of a form of life - though I must confess I do not see it clearly as yet - in which the entire man, spirit and flesh, would strive after a deeper and deeper fulfillment of his Self - in which the spirit and the senses would not be enemies to one another, and in which man could achieve unity within himself and with the meaning of his destiny, so that on the summit of his days he could say, "I am my destiny.

We were not somewhere between success and failure; we were elsewhere.

Raising Amity provided sufficient meaning to make any life worth living. He didn’t say as much to Amity,

A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere. But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it.

Why have you done all this for me?" She turned her head to look at him. "Tell me the truth." He shook his head slowly. "I don't think I could have been more terrified of the devil than I was of you," she said, "when it was happening and in my thoughts and nightmares afterward. And when you came home to Willoughby and I realized that the Duke of Ridgeway was you, I thought I would die from the horror of it." His face was expressionless. "I know," he said. "I was afraid of your hands more than anything," she said. "They are beautiful hands." He said nothing. "When did it all change?" she asked. She turned completely toward him and closed the distance between them. "You will not say the words yourself. But they are the same words as the ones on my lips, aren't they?" She watched him swallow. "For the rest of my life I will regret saying them," she said. "But I believe I would regret far more not saying them." "Fleur," he said, and reached out a staying hand. "I love you," she said. "No." "I love you." "It is just that we have spent a few days together," he said, "and talked a great deal and got to know each other. It is just that I have been able to help you a little and you are feeling grateful to me." "I love you," she said. "Fleur." She reached up to touch his scar. "I am glad I did not know you before this happened," she said. "I do not believe I would have been able to stand the pain." "Fleur," he said, taking her wrist in his hand. "Are you crying?" she said. She lifted both arms and wrapped them about his neck and laid her cheek against his shoulder. "Don't, my love. I did not mean to lay a burden on you. I don't mean to do so. I only want you to know that you are loved and always will be." "Fleur," he said, his voice husky from his tears, "I have nothing to offer you, my love. I have nothing to give you. My loyalty is given elsewhere. I didn't want this to happen. I don't want it to happen. You will meet someone else. When I am gone you will forget and you will be happy." She lifted her head and looked into his face. She wiped away one of his tears with one finger. "I am not asking anything in return," she said. "I just want to give you something, Adam. A free gift. My love. Not a burden, but a gift. To take with you when you go, even though we will never see each other again." He framed her face with his hands and gazed down into it. "I so very nearly did not recognize you," he said. "You were so wretchedly thin, Fleur, and pale. Your lips were dry and cracked, your hair dull and lifeless. But I did know you for all that. I think I would still be in London searching for you if you had not gone to that agency. But it's too late, love. Six years too late.

An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.

If anything gives meaning to our lives, rich or poor, yesterday or today, here or elsewhere, it is affection. Without it, every bit of philosophical or scientific research will leave us in an existential emptiness. Life is viable because someone, even just once, looked at us with love.

One of the hardest things in life is the act of saying goodbye. If only it were as simple as saying goodbye for now, and see you again. Would it still be the same you I see, the next time we meet? Or the same me, for that matter? For to part with a person or place often also means having to say goodbye to a particular state of being or phase in you life.

We are in a depression. I don't just mean economically. We are blue. It is okay to feel how you feel but don't stay there. Think about the helpers. For example a friend got me a mask. Another friend got me cleaning supplies. She just may have saved my life! I have a fan who is making masks to help people. She elsewhere in the universe. So it's everyone. We are stronger together! The whole world is feeling the same. So spread the love out there and accept that love in! This too shall pass!

And I thought, no, the dead are there, and do know themselves and others. I know it’s so; it can’t be otherwise. To be dead, though, isn’t to have further life like ours, just elsewhere; nor is it to live on in the memories of others, or in the dark aliveness of tombs, or in the voices that the still-embodied believe they hear. It’s not like any story that any traveler to that realm has told, or any spirit claiming to have come out of that land either. No. But I believe that even though their life is divided forever from the life we live in the day and the sun, we can know something of it: because we live part of our lives the way they do, in a realm that’s like the realm where they are. I mean in dreams. In dreams we traverse other geographies; we walk the roads, we enter the rooms, we speak to the people and beings we encounter. We meet our kin and our dead, just as they were in their youth and in ours, or transfigured, not themselves. We see and hear but can’t quite smell or touch. We know ourselves to be there while we are there, but we don’t know we know: it’s only when we wake that we know what we saw and heard and felt. Usually we know that we saw and felt much more, but we can’t retrieve it, and so the experience of it is lost for good; in effect it was never ours. And I thought that it must be the same in the sleep of death: there, too, we will do deeds, learn truths, pass through landscapes, meet other souls, think about the living, ponder, feel terror and delight, go always further. The difference is this: from death we will never, never ever, wake to know of it.

[Tolstoy] denounced [many historians'] lamentable tendency to simplify. The experts stumble onto a battlefield, into a parliament or public square, and demand, "Where is he? Where is he?" "Where is who?" "The hero, of course! The leader, the creator, the great man!" And having found him, they promptly ignore all his peers and troops and advisors. They close their eyes and abstract their Napoleon from the mud and the smoke and the masses on either side, and marvel at how such a figure could possibly have prevailed in so many battles and commanded the destiny of an entire continent. "There was an eye to see in this man," wrote Thomas Carlyle about Napoleon in 1840, "a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he was such." But Tolstoy saw differently. "Kings are the slaves of history," he declared. "The unconscious swarmlike life of mankind uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes." Kings and commanders and presidents did not interest Tolstoy. History, his history, looks elsewhere: it is the study of infinitely incremental, imperceptible change from one state of being (peace) to another (war). The experts claimed that the decisions of exceptional men could explain all of history's great events. For the novelist, this belief was evidence of their failure to grasp the reality of an incremental change brought about by the multitude's infinitely small actions.

When I was growing up it was still acceptable—not to me but in social terms—to say that one was not interested in science and did not see the point in bothering with it. This is no longer the case. Let me be clear. I am not promoting the idea that all young people should grow up to be scientists. I do not see that as an ideal situation, as the world needs people with a wide variety of skills. But I am advocating that all young people should be familiar with and confident around scientific subjects, whatever they choose to do. They need to be scientifically literate, and inspired to engage with developments in science and technology in order to learn more. A world where only a tiny super-elite are capable of understanding advanced science and technology and its applications would be, to my mind, a dangerous and limited one. I seriously doubt whether long-range beneficial projects such as cleaning up the oceans or curing diseases in the developing world would be given priority. Worse, we could find that technology is used against us and that we might have no power to stop it. I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space. This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos. And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be. So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.

That is probably the single phrase that a lot of Jerusalem rests upon: the persistent illusion of transience. The buildings that we love have been pulled down, the people that we loved have gone, you don’t get anything decent on a Saturday night on the telly any more, they don’t make Spangles . . . all of this roster of loss that is our lives, it doesn’t matter. It’s all fine. It’s all back down the road. You’ll probably be experiencing it again, and again, because there’s nowhere else for your consciousness to go. ‘This means that you should never do anything that you can’t live with eternally, which I think is a good rule for life. It also means that Heaven and Hell exist. They’re just not places that are elsewhere. They are here now. They are your life.

Does your life feel authentically your own?" Dr. B asked during a session. "I'm not even sure I know what that means," I said, increasingly annoyed by our discussions...I longed for a more meaningful life but couldn't begin to articulate what I meant by this. I felt tyrannized by my desire to be elsewhere and awash in guilt at the thought... "It means you're aware of how you are feeling and have chosen the path you're on." ...I was trying to picture what mattered to me - what was the life I wanted to live? I thought of books, close friends, and conversations that skewed toward life's bigger questions. These were the things I truly cared about...I blinked. I'd done it. Somehow, I'd penetrated the looking glass and briefly imagined the life I wanted. It wasn't so hard to envision at all.

I think we can reasonably conclude that complex life will be rare in the universe – there is no innate tendency in natural selection to give rise to humans or any other form of complex life. It is far more likely to get stuck at the bacterial level of complexity. I can’t put a statistical probability on that. The existence of Parakaryon myojinensis might be encouraging for some – multiple origins of complexity on earth means that complex life might be more common elsewhere in the universe. Maybe. What I would argue with more certainty is that, for energetic reasons, the evolution of complex life requires an endosymbiosis between two prokaryotes, and that is a rare random event, disturbingly close to a freak accident, made all the more difficult by the ensuing intimate conflict between cells. After that, we are back to standard natural selection.

God calls upon the soul to give away its own ears and eyes and to let itself be given those of God. Only they who hear with other ears can speak with the mouth of God. God sees what elsewhere is rendered invisible and is of no relevance. Who other than God sees the poor and hears their cry? To use "God's senses" does not mean simply turning inward but becoming free for a different way of living life: See what God sees! Hear what God hears! Laugh where God laughs! Cry where God cries! . . . If there is a verb for the life of mysticism, it is praying. This superfluous activity, this unproductive waste of time happens sunder warumbe, (without any why or wherefore). It is as free of ulterior motives as it is indispensable. Prayer is its own end and not a means to obtain a particular goal. The question "what did it achieve?" must fall silent in face of the reality of prayer.

For every one member of the elite, thousands more were illiterate and impoverished subsistence farmers. After the ‘collapse of civilisation’, many of them moved elsewhere, and some may have died, but for the most part their lives probably did not change much. They went on growing crops. Those people were your ancestors and mine—not the palace-dwellers, but the peasants. Our rich and complex international networks of production and distribution have come to an end before, but here we are, you and I, and here is humanity. What if the meaning of life on earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal—the engineering and production of more and more powerful technologies, the development of more and more complex and abstruse cultural forms? What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always—just to live and be with other people?

Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space.

Moreover, fantasy is part of the articulation of the possible; it moves us beyond what is merely actual and present into a realm of possibility, the not yet actualized or the not actualizable. The struggle to survive is not really separable from the cultural life of fantasy, and the foreclosure of fantasy-through censorship, degradation, or other means-is one strategy for providing for the social death of persons. Fantasy is not the opposite of reality; it is what reality forecloses, and, as a result, it defines the limits of reality, constituting it as its constitutive outside. The critical promise of fantasy, when and where it exists, is to challenge the contingent limits of what will and will not be called reality. Fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise; it establishes the possible in excess of the real; it points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home.

Yet, we are not Skinner's rats. Even Skinner's rats were not Skinner's rats: the patterns of addictive behavior displayed by rats in the Skinner Box were only displayed by rats in isolation, outside of their normal sociable habitat. For human beings, addictions have subjective meanings, as does depression. Marcus Gilroy-Ware's study of social media suggests that what we encounter in our feeds is hedonic stimulation, various moods and sources of arousal- from outrage porn to food porn to porn- which enable us to manage our emotions. In addition that, however, it's also true that we can become attached to the miseries of online life, a state of perpetual outrage and antagonism. There is a sense in which our online avatar resembles a 'virtual tooth' in the sense described by the German surrealist artist Hans Bellmer. In the grip of a toothache, a common reflex is to make a fist so tight that the fingernails bite into the skin. This 'confuses' and 'bisects' the pain by creating a 'virtual center of excitation,' a virtual tooth that seems to draw blood and nervous energy away from the real center of pain. If we are in pain, this suggests, self-harming can be a way of displacing it so that it appears lessened- event though the pain hasn't really been reduced, and we still have a toothache. So if we get hooked on a machine that purports to tell us, among other things, how other people see us- or a version of ourselves, a delegated online image- that suggests something has already gone wrong in our relationships with others. The global rise in depression- currently the world's most widespread illness, having risen some 18 per cent since 2005- is worsened for many people by the social industry. There is a particularly strong correlation between depression and the use of Instagram among young people. But social industry platforms didn't invent depression; they exploited it. And to loosen their grip, one would have to explore what has gone wrong elsewhere.

In marked contrast to the relaxed, typically Latin attitude of the Dominicans the Protestant missionaries were still proceeding at full blast with the fight for souls. These North American evangelists of strictly fundamentalist inclination combined in a curious fashion strict adhesion to the literal meaning of the Old Testament With mastery of the most modern technology. Most of them came from small towns in the Bible Belt, armed with unshakably clear consciences and a rudimentary smattering of theology, convinced that they alone were the repositories of Christian values now abolished elsewhere. Totally ignorant of the vast world, despite their transplantation, and taking the few articles of morality accepted in the rural Amenca of their childhoods to be a universal credo, they strove bravely to spread these principles of salvation all around them. Their rustic faith was well served by a flotilla of light aircraft, a powerful radio, an ultra-modern hospital and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- in short, all the equipment that a battalion of crusaders dropped behind enemy lines needed.

Your life in the multiverse was like a magnificent oak tree with a gajillion branches, some of them deformed and some of them beautiful. You made stupid decisions, and tragedy ensued. You made wise decisions, and tragedy ensued. But for every tragedy, there was a triumph, a world where you lived instead of dying, where you found love instead of losing it, where you prospered. Both fate and free will were involved. Everything that could happen to you was known from the big bang, and yet each version of Amity chose the path she wished to choose. In the end, the meaning of your life was the final shape and beauty—or ugliness—of the tree when all branches had grown to maturity. This was a total crazy-ass way to design the multiverse, really and truly. If before her adventure someone had explained this reality to her, she would have called it bullsugar. However, she had experienced the truth of it, and with the passing days, she had come to see great beauty in this infinite forest of oak trees that were human lives in their striving, such beauty that sometimes the contemplation of it left her breathless and humbled.

And she loved you with all her heart." He sprang to his feet and walked up and down the small room. "I don't want love. I haven't time for it. It's weakness. I am a man, and sometimes I want a woman. When I’ve satisfied my passion I'm ready for other things.I can't overcome my desire, but I hate it; it imprisons my spirit; I look forward to the time when I shall be free from all desire and can give myself without hindrance to my work. Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. I know lust. That's normal and healthy. Love is a disease. Women are the instruments of my pleasure; I have no patience with their claim to be helpmates, partners, companions. “ I had never heard Strickland speak so much at one time. He spoke with a passion of indignation. But neither here nor elsewhere do I pretend to give his exact words; his vocabulary was small, and he had no gift for framing sentences, so that one had to piece his meaning together out of interjections, the expression of his face, gestures and hackneyed phrases. "You should have lived at a time when women were chattels and men the masters of slaves, “ I said. "It just happens that I am a completely normal man." I could not help laughing at this remark, made in all seriousness; but he went on, walking up and down the room like a caged beast, intent on expressing what he felt, but found such difficulty in putting coherently. "When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.She has a small mind and she resents the abstract which she is unable to grasp. She is occupied with material things, and she is jealous of the ideal. The soul of man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her account-book. Do you remember my wife? I saw Blanche little by little trying all her tricks. With infinite patience she prepared to snare me and bind me. She wanted to bring me down to her level; she cared nothing for me, she only wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one thing I wanted: to leave me alone.

A world where only a tiny super-elite are capable of understanding advanced science and technology and its applications would be, to my mind, a dangerous and limited one. I seriously doubt whether long-range beneficial projects such as cleaning up the oceans or curing diseases in the developing world would be given priority. Worse, we could find that technology is used against us and that we might have no power to stop it. I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space. This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos. And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be. So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.

By the same token, in refusing gifts we seem to excuse ourselves from the obligations that arise naturally with gratitude. The taxicab driver Stewart Millard observes, The first conclusion I reached is that money makes us exquisitely inept at real human relationship. If I have just gotten a new set of tires from my friend Greg at his tire shop (I, indeed, was sitting in his parking lot thinking about this!) and no money was exchanged, then how would I repay Greg? And, a bit more subtle question arose: What if I didn’t accept this offer (gift) of tires from Greg? By accepting the gift of tires without money, then an automatic set of behaviors and consideration arise. What can I offer in return? I could wait for him to ask, or I can do the more arduous task of actually getting to know Greg, and thus allowing a more organic exchange to take place. Money means I can pay, and then pay no more attention to my fellow human across the counter. No getting to know him, no exchange of life to accommodate a natural mingling of flows in dependence and appreciation. A reason we are so intolerant of each other is simply because we have money. If that person is displeasing, we just take our money elsewhere—and the original is just left blowing in the wind. One of the most important gifts you can give is to fully receive the gift of another.

If I wished to satirise the present political order I should borrow for it the name which Punch invented during the first German War: Govertisement. This is a portmanteau word and means “government by advertisement.” But my intention is not satiric; I am trying to be objective. The change is this. In all previous ages that I can think of the principal aim of rulers, except at rare and short intervals, was to keep their subjects quiet, to forestall or extinguish widespread excitement and persuade people to attend quietly to their several occupations. And on the whole their subjects agreed with them. They even prayed (in words that sound curiously old-fashioned) to be able to live “a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” and “pass their time in rest and quietness.” But now the organisation of mass excitement seems to be almost the normal organ of political power. We live in an age of “appeal,” “drives,” and “campaigns.” Our rulers have become like schoolmasters and are always demanding “keenness.” And you notice that I am guilty of a slight archaism in calling them “rulers.” “Leaders” is the modern word. I have suggested elsewhere that this is a deeply significant change of vocabulary. Our demand upon them has changed no less than theirs on us. For of a ruler one asks justice, incorruption, diligence, perhaps clemency; of a leader, dash, initiative, and (I suppose) what people call “magnetism” or “personality.

To be a mother I must leave the telephone unanswered, work undone, arrangements unmet. To be myself I must let the baby cry, must forestall her hunger or leave her for evenings out, must forget her in order to think about other things. To succeed in being one means to fail at being the other. The break between mother and self was less clean than I had imagined it in the taxi: and yet it was a premonition, too; for later, even in my best moments, I never feel myself to have progressed beyond this division. I merely learn to legislate for two states, and to secure the border between them. At first, though, I am driven to work at the newer of the two skills, which is motherhood; and it is with a shock that I see, like a plummeting stock market, the resulting plunge in my own significance. Consequently I bury myself further in the small successes of nurture. After three or four weeks I reach a distant point, a remote outpost at which my grasp of the baby’s calorific intake, hours of sleep, motor development and patterns of crying is professorial, while the rest of my life resembles a deserted settlement, an abandoned building in which a rotten timber occasionally breaks and comes crashing to the floor, scattering mice. I am invited to a party, and though I decide to go, and bathe and dress at the appointed hour, I end up sitting in the kitchen and crying while elsewhere its frivolous minutes tick by and then elapse. The baby develops colic, and the bauble of motherhood is once more crushed as easily as eggshell. The question of what a woman is if she is not a mother has been superceded for me by that of what a woman is if she is a mother; and of what a mother, in fact, is.

To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere. ... Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out. Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals. What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.

PG: Who tends to have an interest in moé characters? HT: Clearly we are talking about those who are marginalized— Japanese men in particular, who seem to be getting weaker. After the Second World War, the value of men in Japan was determined by their productivity at work. The man who earned money was able to spend it, showing that he was a worthy mate. This then became the only way to be a man, the only way to be favorably appraised by women. I call this the era of love capitalism, meaning that dating and courtship were increasingly tied to consumption. Trendy dramas aired on television that promoted going to fancy restaurants or taking a ski vacation. So those men who failed or dropped out of the system looked for love elsewhere, for example in manga and anime. The situation got worse when the economy tanked in the 1990s, which made it harder to get that job and be that ideal man. There were a few men who had love and a lot of men who didn’t. I call this the love gap (ren’ai kakusa). Moé provides a low-cost, low-stress solution to this problem. It is love on our terms. Moé is a love revolution that challenges people’s commonsense notions about the world. You don’t need much capital to access moé, and you can do it in a way that suits you. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that everyone should give up on reality; I’m just pointing out that some of us find satisfaction with fictional characters. It’s not for everyone, but maybe more people would recognize this life choice if it wasn’t always belittled. Forcing people to live up to impossible ideals so that they can participate in so-called reality creates so-called losers, who in their despair might lash out at society. We don’t have to accept something just because people tell us that it is normal or right or better.

This, in turn, has given us a “unified theory of aging” that brings the various strands of research into a single, coherent tapestry. Scientists now know what aging is. It is the accumulation of errors at the genetic and cellular level. These errors can build up in various ways. For example, metabolism creates free radicals and oxidation, which damage the delicate molecular machinery of our cells, causing them to age; errors can build up in the form of “junk” molecular debris accumulating inside and outside the cells. The buildup of these genetic errors is a by-product of the second law of thermodynamics: total entropy (that is, chaos) always increases. This is why rusting, rotting, decaying, etc., are universal features of life. The second law is inescapable. Everything, from the flowers in the field to our bodies and even the universe itself, is doomed to wither and die. But there is a small but important loophole in the second law that states total entropy always increases. This means that you can actually reduce entropy in one place and reverse aging, as long as you increase entropy somewhere else. So it’s possible to get younger, at the expense of wreaking havoc elsewhere. (This was alluded to in Oscar Wilde’s famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Mr. Gray was mysteriously eternally young. But his secret was the painting of himself that aged horribly. So the total amount of aging still increased.) The principle of entropy can also be seen by looking behind a refrigerator. Inside the refrigerator, entropy decreases as the temperature drops. But to lower the entropy, you have to have a motor, which increases the heat generated behind the refrigerator, increasing the entropy outside the machine. That is why refrigerators are always hot in the back. As Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once said, “There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that this terrible universal disease or temporariness of the human’s body will be cured.

The mind's well-being was the well that was poisoned. One doesn't own a little anti-Semitism as if it were a puppy that isn't big enough yet to poop a lot. One yap from the pooch is already too much. Nor is saying "it was only social" a successful excuse. Only social, indeed ... only a mild case. The mild climate renders shirt-sleeves acceptable, loosens ties and collars, allows extremes to seem means, makes nakedness normal, facilitates the growth of weeds. Since the true causes of anti-Semitism do not lie with the Jews themselves (for if they did, anti-Semitism might bear some semblance of reason), they must lie elsewhere--so, if not in the hated, then in the hater, in another mode of misery. Rationalist philosophers, from the beginning, regarded ignorance and error as the central sources of evil, and the conditions of contemporary life have certainly given their view considerable support. We are as responsible for our beliefs as for our behavior. Indeed, they are usually linked. Our brains respond, as well as our bodies do, to exercise and good diet. One can think of hundreds of beliefs--religious, political, social--which must be as bad for the head as fat is for the heart, and whose loss would lighten and enliven the spirit; but inherently silly ones, like transubstantiation, nowadays keep their consequences in control and relatively close to home. However, anti-Semitism does not; it is an unmitigated moral catastrophe. One can easily imagine how it might contaminate other areas of one's mental system. But is it the sickness or a symptom of a different disease? Humphrey Carpenter's level headed tone does not countenance Pound's corruption. It simply places the problem before us, permitting out anger and our pity. -- From "Ezra Pound

At the same time as suggesting the language game we clearly do not have a change in the name of God as our only way to think in New Testament terms of an earth at peace. There is Jesus! It is very hard to attribute violence to the originator of the gospel, of the good news of God’s forgiveness and love, of divine healing and welcome. Despite the fact that people refer to his action in the temple in the last days of his life as an exceptional yet conclusive ‘proof’ of Jesus’ use of violence no serious bible scholar would look on these actions divorced from his whole ministry. And because of that we have to see them as a conscious and deliberate prophetic sign-action, taking control of the temple for a brief period to show how it stood in contrast to the direct relationship with God which he proclaimed, and to make the point with a definitive emphasis. The whip he plaits in John is used to drive the animals, probably with the sound of the crack alone. No one is attacked. No one gets hurt. And very soon the situation reverts to the status quo: the authorities take back control of the temple and decide on Jesus’ suffering and death in order to control him. Overall the event is to be seen as Jesus placing himself purposely and calculatedly in the cross-hairs for the sake of the truth, much rather than doing harm to anyone else. The consequences of his actions were indeed ‘the cross’, and supremely in the situation of crucifixion Jesus does not invoke retaliation on his enemies, or threaten those who reject redemption; rather he prays for their forgiveness. No, Jesus’ whole life-story makes him unmistakably a figure of transcendent nonviolence. The problem lies elsewhere, with the way the cross is interpreted within the framework of a violent God. It is unfathomably ironic that the icon of human non-retaliation, Jesus’ cross, gets turned in the tradition into a supreme piece of vengeance—God’s ‘just’ punishment of Jesus in our place. My book, Cross Purposes, is about the way this tradition got formed and it represents just one of a constant stream of writing, gathering force at the end of the last century and continuing into this, questioning how this could be the meaning of the central symbol of Christianity.2 I think the vigor of that question can only continue to grow, while the nonviolence of Jesus’ response must at the same time stand out in greater and greater relief, in its own right and for its own sake. And for that same reason the argument at hand, of ‘No-name’ for a nonviolent God, can only be strengthened when we highlight the nonviolence of Jesus against the traditional violent concept of ‘God’. Now

What did you find out?” I asked. “That’s Prince Jason’s ship, all right,” he replied. “I talked to one of the crewmen overseeing the work. That is, he talked to me. Yelled at me, I mean. Told me to get out of the way so Lord Pelias’s slaves could do their work.” “Is that why you’re wearing such a long face?” I asked. “I’ll teach him better manners.” Milo shook his head. “Forget him. He’s nothing. The man with him, the one who called him ‘brother,’ he’s why I’m worried. He said, ‘Let the boy be. Can’t you see he’s only hoping for a handout?’ And when I told him I wanted to earn my keep as his weapons bearer, he answered, ‘Better look elsewhere. This ship’s fully manned. We’re not looking for any extra hands.’” “Maybe he only said that to get rid of you,” I suggested hopefully. Milo shrugged again. “They’re still there, by the ship, and plenty of others who don’t look like slaves. Talk to them yourself. Maybe they just didn’t like my looks.” “Then they’re fools and I wouldn’t waste my breath on them,” I said. “You’re always too kind to me, La--Glaucus. But you mustn’t worry. Someone’s got to be ugly in this world.” He grinned. “You’re not ugly,” I said hotly. And that was true. The same harsh slave’s life that had left Milo so skinny had also given him wiry muscles under sun-browned skin. He reminded me of images I’d seen of the young Hermes, thin but fit and graceful. His dark hair was growing longer, like a noble’s, and his brown eyes shone when he smiled. “Have it your way,” he said good-naturedly. “But in case they do prefer your looks, see if you can persuade them to hire me, too.

All things therefore are of one and the same substance, that is, from one and the same God; as also the Lord says to the disciples “Therefore every scribe, which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” He did not teach that he who brought forth the old was one, and he that brought forth the new, another; but that they were one and the same. For the Lord is the good man of the house, who rules the entire house of His Father; and who delivers a law suited both for slaves and those who are as yet undisciplined; and gives fitting precepts to those that are free, and have been justified by faith, as well as throws His own inheritance open to those that are sons. And He called His disciples “scribes” and “teachers of the kingdom of heaven;” of whom also He elsewhere says to the Jews: “Behold, I send unto you wise men, and scribes, and teachers; and some of them ye shall kill, and persecute from city to city.” Now, without contradiction, He means by those things which are brought forth from the treasure new and old, the two covenants; the old, that giving of the law which took place formerly; and He points out as the new, that manner of life required by the Gospel, of which David says, “Sing unto the Lord a new song;” and Esaias, “Sing unto the Lord a new hymn. His beginning (initium), His name is glorified from the height of the earth: they declare His powers in the isles.” And Jeremiah says: “Behold, I will make a new covenant, not as I made with your fathers” in Mount Horeb. But one and the same householder produced both covenants, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who spake with both Abraham and Moses, and who has restored us anew to liberty, and has multiplied that grace which is from Himself.

Now let me begin by sketching for you a very agreeable picture. You are still, I should say, a youngish man by the world’s standards; your life, as people say, lies ahead of you; in the normal course you might expect twenty or thirty years of only slightly and gradually diminishing activity. By no means a cheerless prospect, and I can hardly expect you to see it as I do—as a slender, breathless, and far too frantic interlude. The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime! But you, it may be, are destined to be more fortunate, since by the standards of Shangri-La your sunlit years have scarcely yet begun. It will happen, perhaps, that decades hence you will feel no older than you are to-day—you may preserve, as Henschell did, a long and wondrous youth. But that, believe me, is only an early and superficial phase. There will come a time when you will age like others, though far more slowly, and into a condition infinitely nobler; at eighty you may still climb to the pass with a young man’s gait, but at twice that age you must not expect the whole marvel to have persisted. We are not workers of miracles; we have made no conquest of death or even of decay. All we have done and can sometimes do is to slacken the tempo of this brief interval that is called life. We do this by methods which are as simple here as they are impossible elsewhere; but make no mistake; the end awaits us all.

It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can BE no difference any- where that doesn't MAKE a difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one. There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley and Hume made momentous contributions to truth by its means. Shadworth Hodgson keeps insisting that realities are only what they are 'known-as.' But these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments: they were preluders only. Not until in our time has it generalized itself, become conscious of a universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny. I believe in that destiny, and I hope I may end by inspiring you with my belief. Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power. That means the empiricist temper regnant, and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of finality in truth. At the same time it does not stand for any special results. It is a method only. But the general triumph of that method would mean an enormous change in what I called in my last lecture the 'temperament' of philosophy. Teachers of the ultra-rationalistic type would be frozen out, much as the courtier type is frozen out in republics, as the ultramontane type of priest is frozen out in protestant lands. Science and metaphysics would come much nearer together, would in fact work absolutely hand in hand.

You are experiencing night that doesn't mean there is no Sun..it is shining elsewhere.

VIBRATION = ETHERIC Essentially, the etheric is the vibration layer: you sense the etheric while you feel the vibration. That assertion is too simplistic to be completely true, and some etheric levels of light and astral vibration can be discerned later. But the equation: ‘vibration= etheric’ is an excellent reference in the beginning to make sense of your experiences. Vibrating movement in your feet, for example, means that in the hands, the etheric life force is set in motion. Feeling the eyebrows movement means that the third eye's etheric layer is triggered...and more, for any part of your body, or even outside your body's limits. Not only does the etheric permeate the physical body, but it also spreads beyond it in proportions that may vary depending on different internal factors. When the vibration seems to be more intense in your hands or elsewhere, it means that you are coming into contact with the etheric body's deeper and more complex layers. We use external stimuli in the beginning to awaken the etheric vibration sensation. Afterward, without rubbing or using any other external stimulus, you can get the same feeling. The sound is going to come from within. Therefore, I would say that you do not think too much about whether the experience is real or etheric or theoretical in these first stages of training. Believe in your experience. A very simple evidence of the vibrations of non-physical nature would be to cut off your physical hand and know that you still feel the same vibration as in amputees ' phantom limb syndrome. Some signs of this vibration's non-physical nature would be that you will feel it in all kinds of places in your body, without any form of physical stimulation or rubbing. You will even sense it beyond the limits of your physical body, first around you, and then in objects that are increasingly distant. The etheric movement sense will then be completely separated from any physical sensation. In any case, please remember that there is nothing (and therefore nothing to doubt either) to believe in the approach. It is not what you believe that matters, but what you interpret. The constant focus is on learning directly. Know how to interpret this vibrating force and then determine how to comprehend it.

Yet,’ said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, ‘there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas – when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man’s past and future, so that he can look back and forward with complacency – why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation.’ Affection

Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere. But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it.

Third, whereas the Mosaic covenant was temporary (vv. 10–11; see Gal 3:23–25), the new covenant endures forever (v. 11). A key verb in this passage and the following verses is katargeō (vv. 7, 11, 13, 14—all in the passive voice). Although many translations, including the NAB, render katargeō as “fade” in verses 7, 11, and 13, this meaning does not correspond to Paul’s usage elsewhere. Rather, he uses this verb to explain that the old covenant ministry “has been set aside” or “rendered inoperative.”[14] Because God has now acted once for all through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and through the sending of the Spirit, the new covenant ministry is marked by permanence.

You all know why we're here. There's often so much sham about this business of marriage. Everyone accepts it—ritual. That's why I was so heartened when Alfred asked me to perform this ceremony. He has certain beliefs, which I assume you all know. He is an atheist, which is perfectly all right. Really, it is. I happen not to be, but inasmuch as this ceremony connotes an abandonment of ritual in the search for truth, I agreed to perform it. First, let me state to you, Alfred, and to you, Patricia, that of the 200 marriages that I have performed, all but seven have failed. So the odds are not good. We don't like to admit it, especially at the wedding ceremony, but it's in the back of all our minds, isn't it? How long will it last? We all think that, don't we? We don't like to bring it out in the open, but we all think that. Well, I say, why not bring it out in the open? Why does one decide to marry? Social pressure? Boredom? Loneliness? Sexual appeasement? Love? I won't put any of these reasons down. Each in its own way is adequate. Each is all right. Last year, I married a musician who wanted to get married in order to stop masturbating. Please, don't be startled. I'm not putting him down. That marriage did not work. But the man tried. He is now separated, still masturbating, but he is at peace with himself because he tried society's way. So, you see, it was not a mistake. It turned out all right. Now, just last month, I married a novelist to a painter. Everyone at the wedding ceremony was under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug. The drug quickened our mental responses, slowed our physical responses, and the whole ceremony took two days to perform. Never have the words had such meaning. Now, that marriage should last. Still, if it does not, well, that'll be all right. For don't you see, any step that one takes is useful, is positive, has to be positive because it's a part of life. Even the negation of the previously taken step is positive. That too is a part of life. And in this light, and only in this light, should marriage be viewed as a small, single step. If it works, fine. If it fails, fine. Look elsewhere for satisfaction. To more marriages, fine. As many as one wants, fine. To homosexuality? Fine. To drug addiction? I will not put it down. Each of these is an answer for somebody.

First, let me state to you, Alfred, and to you, Patricia, that of the 200 marriages that I have performed, all but seven have failed. So the odds are not good. We don't like to admit it, especially at the wedding ceremony, but it's in the back of all our minds, isn't it? How long will it last? We all think that, don't we? We don't like to bring it out in the open, but we all think that. Well, I say, why not bring it out in the open? Why does one decide to marry? Social pressure? Boredom? Loneliness? Sexual appeasement? Love? I won't put any of these reasons down. Each in its own way is adequate. Each is all right. Last year, I married a musician who wanted to get married in order to stop masturbating. Please, don't be startled. I'm not putting him down. That marriage did not work. But the man tried. He is now separated, still masturbating, but he is at peace with himself because he tried society's way. So, you see, it was not a mistake. It turned out all right. Now, just last month, I married a novelist to a painter. Everyone at the wedding ceremony was under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug. The drug quickened our mental responses, slowed our physical responses, and the whole ceremony took two days to perform. Never have the words had such meaning. Now, that marriage should last. Still, if it does not, well, that'll be all right. For don't you see, any step that one takes is useful, is positive, has to be positive because it's a part of life. Even the negation of the previously taken step is positive. That too is a part of life. And in this light, and only in this light, should marriage be viewed as a small, single step. If it works, fine. If it fails, fine. Look elsewhere for satisfaction. To more marriages, fine. As many as one wants, fine. To homosexuality? Fine. To drug addiction? I will not put it down. Each of these is an answer for somebody.

Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance? 113. There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer have blind trust in a better tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere. This is not to reject the possibilities which technology continues to offer us. But humanity has changed profoundly, and the accumulation of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything.

Twenty-two thousand jobs were to be shed in two years. Since 80 percent of workers were fonctionnaires and therefore unsackable, management resorted to more insidious psychological tactics to force them to leave the company. They engaged in what might be described as terror tactics that targeted individuals by every means possible. Some employees received a barrage of e-mails from managers exhorting them to find work elsewhere. Others were forced to change jobs or move to new cities on a continuous basis as managers sought to destabilize their working life. Others were subject to interviews where they were criticized and humiliated in front of others. Under French law, these methods are defined as harcèlement moral or psychological harassment.

Thank you.” I hated feeling indebted to him, but I took great comfort in the hams and bacon slabs soaking in the curing syrup. He shrugged. “Nothing one neighbor wouldn’t do for another.” “I think you are more neighborly than most.” He poked a stick into the cooling ash. “It isn’t hard to want to help you.” I sucked in the smoky night air, its cold stinging my nose and chest. Though that night with Arthur on the front steps of the schoolhouse in Downington hadn’t been cold, suddenly it seemed too similar to this one. All alone. In the dark. Words that could mean so many different things. “Thank you,” I said. His shoulder raised and lowered as he stared into the distance. I wondered what his life was like, a single man in this small town. No family to speak of. Prater’s Junction didn’t seem to have many girls of an age for him to be interested in. So why didn’t he go elsewhere? Nothing held him here that I could see. He threw the stick on top of the fire pit. “I did it.” I pulled my coat closer around me. “Did what?” “Asked to be considered for a Texas Ranger.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat. “Congratulations. I hope they accept you.” He stepped closer, so close that I could see every inch of his face, in spite of the cloak of night. “I’d never have dared, but for you.” With a hard swallow, I stepped away. Away from the reach of his arms, his lips. I had no intention of falling for a man I didn’t really know. Not again. Besides, though the sheriff had endearing qualities, my heart didn’t leap at his nearness. “Rebekah?” Ollie’s voice, from the house. Sheriff Jeffries touched his hat, stepped back, and nodded. “See you at church on Sunday, Rebekah.

would have to eat nearly a bushel of apples a day or half a bushel of oranges to obtain a liberal factor of safety for providing phosphorus; similarly one would be required to eat nine and one half pounds of carrots or eleven pounds of beets each day to get enough phosphorus for a liberal factor of safety, while this quantity would be provided in one pound of lentils or beans, wheat or oats. I have discussed elsewhere the availability of phosphorus depending upon its chemical form. Since the calories largely determine the satisfying of the appetite and since under ordinary circumstances we stop when we have obtained about two thousand to twenty-five hundred very little of the highly sweetened fruits defeats our nutritional program. We would have to consume daily the contents of thirty-two one pound jars of marmalade, jellies or jams to provide a two gram intake of phosphorus. This quantity would provide 32,500 calories; an amount impossible for the system to take care of. Milk is one of the best foods for providing minerals but it may be inadequate in several vitamins. Of all of the primitive groups studied those using sea foods abundantly appear to obtain an adequate quantity of minerals particularly phosphorus with the greatest ease, in part because the fat-soluble vitamins provided in the sea foods (by which I mean animal life of the sea) are usually high. This enables a more efficient utilization of the minerals, calcium and phosphorus

Almost every thought you think is then concerned with past or future, and your sense of self depends on the past for your identity and on the future for its fulfillment. Fear, anxiety, expectation, regret, guilt, anger are the dysfunctions of the time-bound state of consciousness. There are three ways in which the ego will treat the present moment: as a means to an end, as an obstacle, or as an enemy. Let us look at them in turn, so that when this pattern operates in you, you can recognize it and—decide again. To the ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment that is considered more important, even though the future never comes except as the present moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.

Sometimes it is helpful to see where the same words are used elsewhere, to help scripture interpret itself.  Let’s look at Romans 15:19 – where pleroo is translated as “fully preached.”  Elsewhere it is translated in such a way as to mean “filled up.”  What it never means is “done away with.”  I once heard someone teach, “If my wife is feeling fulfilled, is she feeling filled up with satisfaction or done away with?” Ginomai is the word that means “come to pass” – far more closely resembling the English meaning of “fulfill” but still not meaning “done away with.

Joan's openness to God, in other words, had practical consequences that could be understood only with the passing of time - precisely the way every person discovers a meaning and purpose in life. In Joan's case fidelity to God's summon came to mean a commitment to alleviate human suffering by lifting the siege of Orleans. For now that was the essential meaning of "saving France" - not a political act but a humanitarian one. As for the crowning of Charles at Reims, it seems that this goal became clear only later, as a sort of coda after the successes at Orleans and elsewhere in the Loire Valley.

Rather, by psyche here Paul basically means what the Hebrew nephesh regularly meant: the whole human being seen from the point of view of one’s inner life, that mixture of feeling, understanding, imagination, thought and emotion which are in fact bound up with the life of the body and mind but which are neither in themselves obviously physical effects nor necessarily the result, or the cause, of mental processes. Just as, for Paul, soma is the whole person seen in terms of public, space-time presence, and sarx is the whole person seen in terms of corruptibility and perhaps rebellion, so psyche is the whole person seen in terms of, and from the perspective of, what we loosely call the ‘inner’ life. And Paul’s point is that this person, this psychikos, ‘soulish’, person, still belongs in the present age, deaf to the music of the age to come. Here (2:11) and elsewhere Paul can use the word pneuma to refer to the human ‘spirit’, by which he seems to mean almost what he sometimes means by kardia, ‘heart’, the very centre of the personality and the point where one stands on the threshhold of encounter with the true god.

Some of the story was familiar. The childhood in Poland. The rise of the forces that began to limit their movement. The dread. The aborted education. The father that was shot in front of him; the brothers sent away to die elsewhere. The guilt that he’d survived alone. “The boy who helped me,” Zelig said. “Chaim,” Carl said. “You named me for him.” “He wasn’t dead when I woke up on the morning that I left,” Zelig said. His face had changed and he and Phyllis were now looking at Carl carefully. “What do you mean?” “He was still alive when I left,” Zelig said. “He gave you his ticket to the boat. He gave you his formula.” “No,” Zelig said. “I took it. I went to take it from his hand and he woke up and fought me and I punched him, and I don’t know what happened after that. I ran. I ran and ran, and I never checked. I went to the boat. I came to America. I never found out what happened to him.” Carl shook his head. “No,” he said. “I had to save my life,” Zelig said. “That’s what a war does to you. It turns you into a question mark, and there’s only yes or no. And by then I had no other answers. I had to keep trying. You don’t know when to stop trying when you’re constantly being asked like that.” “So what happened?” “I lived with it. I came here. It was a new world, and I tried to be a new person. But I dreamed of him every night. I wore him like a chain around my ankles. When I died, his face was the last thing I saw.” “Oh no,” Carl said. “Oh no.” “I’m forgiven now,” Zelig said. “Don’t you see? I was judged and then I was finally forgiven.

Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”61 You could help direct the world, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward Heaven and a bit more away from Hell. Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that. You could aim elsewhere. You could, in fact, devote your life to this. That would give you a Meaning, with a capital M. That would justify your miserable existence. That would atone for your sinful nature, and replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden.

This is not to say that the race question is any nearer resolution in Brazil than anywhere else - simply that racist ideology faces a more difficult task in Brazil on account of the racial confusion and the range of race mixtures that exist there. Discrimination confronts a web of racial lines as unpredictable as the lines of the human palm. This invalidation of racism by virtue of the scattering of its object is far more subtle and effective than ideological struggle, whose ambiguity invariably revives the very problem it seeks to resolve. Racism will never end so long as it is combated frontally in terms of rational rebuttal. It can be defeated only through an ironic give-and-take founded precisely on racial differences: not at all through the legitimation of differences by legal means, but through an ultimately violent interaction grounded in seduction and voracity. One thinks of the Bishop of Pernambuco; one thinks of the words 'How good he was, my little Frenchman!' He is very good-looking, so he is sanctified - and eaten. He is granted something greater than the right to exist: the prestige of dying. If racism is a violent abreaction in response to the Other's seductive power (rather than to the Other's difference), it can surely be defused only by an increase in seductiveness itself. So many other cultures enjoy a more original situation than ours. For us everything is predictable: we have extraordinary analytical means but no situation to analyse. We live theoretically well beyond our own events: hence our deep melancholy. For others destiny still flickers: they live it, but it remains for them, in life as in death, something forever indecipherable. As for us, we have abolished 'elsewhere' . Cultures stranger than ours live in prostration (before the heavens, before destiny); we live in consternation (at the absence of destiny). Nothing can come from anywhere except from us. This is, in a way, the most absolute misfortune.

I know that you believe in something called Conservation of Matter. That you believe every atom in existence has been present in the universe since the beginning of, well, of everything. That each time something new is made — a new person, a new plant or animal — the atomic structure will contain atoms reused, recycled if you like, and that past life memories and so on may be a result of this. I know that you believe in the messages of your dreams and that you share the dream experiences. That you believe the Earth might have been seeded from elsewhere, either deliberately or by accident, but I don’t know why you think that.’ ‘Panspermia,’ Amy said. It was the first time she had spoken since Ray had sat down. ‘It’s becoming almost respectable now. People like Sir Geoffrey Hoyle are talking about it as a possibility. Did you know, for instance, that about 70 per cent of the Earth’s water had an extraterrestrial origin and there’s evidence of bacteria at least arriving with it?’ Ray shook his head. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘But how does it fit with Lee?’ ‘Lee was a would-be alchemist,’ Amy said. ‘He believed in transmutation. We all do, it’s part of our religion: that the soul, the essence of life, can be transmuted and purified through meditation and living a good life. Through experience. Lee thought you could push the process faster. Like base metals into gold. Humankind into something else.’ ‘And this transmutation,’ Ray asked. ‘I mean, as part of your belief system, what are you hoping to achieve by it?

In fact, it is by no means certain that the purpose of Plato or of Aristotle, as Fārābī understood it, required the actualization of the best political order or of the virtuous city. Fārābī adumbrates the problem by making a distinction between Socrates’ investigations and Plato’s investigations, as well as between “the way of Socrates” and the way adopted eventually by Plato. “The science and the art of Socrates” which is to be found in Plato’s Laws, is only a part of Plato’s, the other part being “the science and the art of Timaeus” which is to be found in the Timaeus. “The way of Socrates” is characterized by the emphasis on “the scientific investigation of justice and the virtues,” whereas the art of Plato is meant to supply “the science of the essence of every being” and hence especially the science of the divine and on the natural things. The difference between the way of Socrates and the way of Plato points back to the difference between the attitude of the two men toward the actual cities. The crucial difficulty was created by the political or social status of philosophy: in the nations and cities of Plato’s time, there was no freedom of teaching and of investigation. Socrates was therefore confronted with the alternative, whether he should choose security and life, and thus conform with the false opinions and the wrong way of life of his fellow-citizens, or else non-conformity and death. Socrates chose non-conformity and death. Plato found a solution to the problem posed by the fate of Socrates, in founding the virtuous city in speech: only in that “other city” can man reach his perfection. Yet, according to Fārābī, Plato “repeated” his account of the way of Socrates and he “repeated” the mention of the vulgar of the cities and nations which existed in his time. The repetition amounts to a considerable modification of the first statement, or to a correction of the Socratic way. The Platonic way, as distinguished from the Socratic way, is a combination of the way of Socrates with the way of Thrasymachus; for the intransigent way of Socrates is appropriate only for the philosopher’s dealing with the elite, whereas the way of Thrasymachus, which is both more and less exacting than the former, is appropriate for his dealing with the vulgar. What Fārābī suggests is that by combining the way of Socrates with the way of Thrasymachus, Plato avoided the conflict with the vulgar and thus the fate of Socrates. Accordingly, the revolutionary quest for the other city ceased to be necessary: Plato substituted it for a more constructive way of action, namely, the gradual replacement of the accepted opinions by the truth or an approximation of the truth. The replacement of the accepted opinions could not be gradual, if it were not accompanied by a provisional acceptance of the accepted opinions: as Fārābī elsewhere declares, conformity with the opinions of the religious community in which one is brought up, is a necessary qualification for the future philosopher. The replacement of the accepted opinions could not be gradual if it were not accompanied by the suggestion of opinions which, while pointing toward the truth, do not too flagrantly contradict the accepted opinions. We may say that Fārābī’s Plato eventually replaces the philosopher-king who rules openly in the virtuous city, by the secret kingship of the philosopher who, being “a perfect man” precisely because he is an “investigator,” lives privately as a member of an imperfect society which he tries to humanize within the limits of the possible.

It [the rational principle] shuts off the human ego from the living meaning in the outer world, which it is for ever 'murdering to dissect', and encloses the same ego in the network of its own, now abstract, thoughts. And it is just in the course of that very shutting off that the ego itself stirs and awakes to conscious existence. Yet, having awoken, it is as helpless as any other new-born thing without the life of the mother-Nature from which it sprang. Let the weaning be followed too soon by separation, and the wailing creature perishes of cold. Such a separation, a separation of consciousness from the real world, is today only too conspicuous alike in philosophy, science, literature, and normal experience. Isolated thus, suspended, as it were, in vacuo, and hermetically sealed from truth and life, not only the proper name, but the very ego itself, of which that is but the symbol, pines and dwindles away before our eyes to a thin nothing--a mere inductive abstraction from tabulated card-indexed behaviour, whose causes lie elsewhere. Nor is there any remedy for this state of affairs but that experience of truth, or identification of the self with the meaning of Life, which is both poetry and knowledge.

In my life I've done more suffering than thinking— though I believe one understands better that way. You see, dogs aren't enough any more. People feel so damned lonely, they need company, they need something bigger, stronger, to lean on, something that can really stand up to it all. Dogs aren't enough; what we need is elephants. . . It seems that the elephants Morel was trying to save were purely imaginary and symbolic, a parable, as they say, and that the poor bastard was really defending the old human rights, the rights of man, those noble, clumsy, gigantic, anachronistic survivals of another age - another geological epoch. . . you announce this salvation as coming *soon’— though I suppose that in the language of paleontology, which is not exactly that of human suffering, the word soon’ means a few trifling hun- dred thousands of years. Earth was his kingdom, his place, his field— he belonged. . The lorry was literally stuffed with ‘trophies’: tusks, tails, heads, skins— an orgy of butch- ery. De Vries, was certainly not collecting for museums, because most of them had been so riddled with shot as to be unrecognizable and in any case unsuitable for the pleasure of the eye. I suppose there are things that nothing can kill and that remain forever intact. It’s as if nothing could ever j^ppen to human beings. They’re a species over which it’s not easy to triumph. They’ve a way of rising from the ashes, smiling and holding hands. "Well, I finally got an idea. When he fails, do like me: think about free elephant ride through Africa for hundreds and hundreds of wonderful animals that nothing could be built—either a wall or a fence of barbed wire—passing large open spaces and crush everything in its path, and destroying everything—while they live, nothing is able to stop them—what freedom! And even when they are no longer alive, who knows, perhaps continue to race elsewhere still free. So you begin to torment your claustrophobia, barbed wire, reinforced concrete, complete materialism imagine herds of elephants of freedom, follow them with his eyes never left them on their run and will see you soon feel better ... " years of isolation in the depths of the jungle have no power against a tenacious hope, and that a hundred acres of land at the height of the rainy season are easier to clear than are certain little intimate nooks of our soul. she understood perfectly well how unconvincing this sounded, but she couldn’t help it: it was the truth. He felt that, at his age, patience was ceasing to be a virtue and was becoming a luxury he could less and less afford. He strove for one last time to look at the affair with all the detachment and all the serenity suitable to a man of science. the immense sky, filled with absence. with the impassive face of a man who feels perfectly sure of having the last word. Of course to the pure all things are pure.

natives who were laughing with that light, eternal laughter which is their way of enduring all things I don’t know where the English dug up all that damned self-assurance, but T imagine it’s just part of their sense of humor. the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us There's one merit nobody will ever be able to take away from the Communists: that of having looked man in the face. They didn't send him to Eton to learn protective coloration. Maybe the West is a civilization, but the Communists are an ugly truth about man. Don't accuse them of inhuman methods: everything about them is human. We're all one great, lovely zoological family, and we shouldn't forget it. That's how you came to be in the gutter Colonel and it's no use your taking refuge on an island and behaving like an ostrich— being English, I mean; the gutter is there, it's you, or rather in you; it flows in your veins. Have you ever seen a baby elephant lying on its side, with its tnink inert, gazing at you with eyes in which there seem to have taken refuge all those so highly praised human qualities of which humanity is so largely devoid? that spark of misanthropy which most people carry in them, a presentiment of some different and better company than their own kind, He had spent five years in the Sahara himself, at the head of a Camel Corps unit, and those years had been the happiest of his life.It was true that in the desert a man felt less lonely than elsewhere, perhaps because he lived there in constant, almost physical contact with the sky, and so had all the company he needed. For what remained, a pipe was enough. He wanted to say all this to Haas, but his years in the desert hadn’t made him very talkative, and he also noticed that certain things which he felt deeply changed their meaning at the touch of words, so that he could no longer recognize them himself as he spoke. So that indeed he often wondered whether thinking were enough, whether thoughts were not a mere groping for something that was forever out of reach, whether days of real vision were not still ahead, and whether the mysterious cells which lay still unused in man’s brain would not, one day, lead toward light. he felt less and less need to exchange ideas with other men, because essentially they no longer came to him as questions, but as certainties. the man who changed species’ and of the last ‘fighter for dignity.’ Men are dying to preserve a certain splendor of life. Call it freedom, or dignity . . . They are dying to preserve a certain natural splendor.” people who mistake their private neurosis for a philosophical outlook.” Men are dying to preserve a certain splendor of life. Call it free- dom, or dignity . . . They are dying to preserve a certain natural .splendor.

I shall sing you a song illustrating the meaning of the Dharma. The vulture, who soars through the skies, Descends for food by the power of desire. Doesn’t it notice when it is caught in a snare? The white snow-lioness, who majestically poises on the glaciers, Strays down into the woods by the power of desire. Doesn’t she notice when a blizzard has built up? The tiger, who lives in the sandalwood forests to the south, Roams through ravines by the power of desire. Doesn’t he notice when an avalanche is striking? The big fish, who swims through the waters, Chases bait by the power of desire. Doesn’t she notice she is caught in a net? Your mind, the primordial buddha, Searches elsewhere by the power of desire. Doesn’t it notice that it is wandering in samsara?

I wander through the feria and greet my colleagues who are wandering as dreamily as I am. Dreamily× dreamily = a prison in literary heaven. Wandering. Wandering. The honor of poets: the chant we hear as a pallid judgment. I see young faces looking at the books on display and feeling for coins in the depths of pockets as dark as hope. 7 × 1 = 8, I say to myself as I glance out of the corner of my eye at the young readers and a formless image is superimposed on their remote little smiling faces as slowly as an iceberg. We all pass under the balcony where the letters A and E hang and their blood gushes down on us and stains us forever. But the balcony is pallid like us, and pallor never attacks pallor. At the same time, and I say this in my defense, the balcony wanders with us too. Elsewhere this is called mafia. I see an office, I see a computer running, I see a lonely hallway. Pallor× iceberg = a lonely hallway slowly peopled by our own fear, peopled with those who wander the feria of the hallway, looking not for any book but for some certainty to shore up the void of our certainties. Thus we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation. Herds. Hangmen. The scalpel slices the bodies. A and E × Feria del Libro = other bodies; light as air, incandescent, as if last night my publisher had fucked me up the ass. Dying can seem satisfactory as a response, Blanchot would say. 31 × 31 = 961 good reasons. Yesterday we sacrificed a young South American writer on the town altar. As his blood dripped over the bas-relief of our ambitions I thought about my books and oblivion, and that, at last, made sense. A writer, we've established, shouldn't look like a writer. He should look like a banker, a rich kid who grows up without a care in the world, a mathematics professor, a prison official. Dendriform. Thus, paradoxically, we wander. Our arborescence × the balcony's pallor = the hallway of our triumph. How can young people, readers by antonomasia, not realize that we're liars? All one has to do is look at us! Our imposture is blazoned on our faces! And yet they don't realize, and we can recite with total impunity: 8, 5, 9, 8, 4, 15, 7. And we can wander and greet each other (I, at least, greet everyone, the juries and the hangmen, the benefactors and the students), and we can praise the faggot for his unbridled heterosexuality and the impotent man for his virility and the cuckold for his spotless honor. And no one moans: there is no anguish. Only our nocturnal silence when we crawl on all fours toward the fires that someone has lit for us at a mysterious hour and with incomprehensible finality. We're guided by fate, though we've left nothing to chance. A writer must resemble a censor, our elders told us, and we've followed that marvelous thought to its penultimate consequence. A writer must resemble a newspaper columnist. A writer must resemble a dwarf and MUST survive. If we didn't have to read too, our work would be a point suspended in nothingness, a mandala pared down to a minimum of meaning, our silence, our certainty of standing with one foot dangling on the far side of death. Fantasies. Fantasies. In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats. Castrated cats wedded to cats with slit throats. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a cryptographic exercise.

To give up living anima by projection means to pull most of the artificial intensity out of relationships; it means that things will seem quieter and less exciting. To put his soul in the cathedral and stop trying to live it though a woman means that a man removes an entire dimension of his life from his human relationship and re-establishes it elsewhere, on another level of himself—a level that he can’t live outwardly, that he must live by himself. To his ego it feels as though he is impoverishing his human relationship or cheating himself. At first he feels that half the thrills, excitement, fun, and intensity is taken out of human relationship. With time he learns that his soul-life never really belonged there and that his human relationship is actually thriving better without it; but for a time, it feels dismal.

And so Paris is not merely the largest town in France, not merely the political and intellectual capital where all the smartest and most ambitious people from the provinces go to seek fame and fortune. If the origins of many of the Parisians lie in La France Profonde, the origins of the French identity nonetheless lie in Paris. Le tout Paris in this sense means something more than the gathering of the small number of people in town who count moss socially, though of course it does mean that as well. It also suggests that to be Parisian' is to have an identity that transcends social class, economic distinction it is to belong to a world apart, to an intellectual and moral category, nor or class, race, or gender, but of a qualitative difference from the rest, an essential worldliness, a heightened expectation--as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in a different context- of the possibilities of life. Many people, foreigners who belonged to Paris and Parisians exiled from it, put it their own way. Rainer Maria Rilke, the German poet, identified Paris as the place where the elan vital, Bergson's phrase for the life force, is stronger than elsewhere. "Elan vital," Rilke asked, "is it life? No. Life is calm, vast, simple. It is the desire to live in haste, in pursuit; it is the impatience to possess all of life right away, right there. Paris is full of this desire; that is who it is so close to death." Victor Hugo, the great novelist and poet, exiled for many years of his life, meant the same thing when he wrote: "Ever since historic times, there has always been on the earth what we call the City. . .. We have needed the city that thinks. ... We have needed the city where everybody is citizen. … Jerusalem unleashes the True. Athens the Beautiful; Rome the Great. Paris is the sum of all three of these great cities.

The Buddha believed in reincarnation, which means he thought that something reincarnates. The Pali literature says: “There are no real ego entities hastening through the ocean of rebirth, but merely life waves, which, according to their nature and activities, manifest themselves here as men, there as animals, and elsewhere as invisible things.” “Life waves”—that’s a nice image. In Hinduism they’re called vasanas, subtle thought-forms. Every act we do creates vasanas, life waves, based on the desires connected with the act. Those life waves go out and out. Even when we die, they continue; the physical body dies, and what remains are those subtle life waves, those mental tendencies that function like a kind of psychic DNA code to determine your next round. In Hinduism that’s called karma. Karma is basically a pattern of life waves, or desire waves, that keep going and going, life after life, until they spend themselves. When they do, there’s no more individual desire, no more separation, and therefore no more incarnation. The game is over.

The girl finally confesses: her brother has decided to go across the border, secretly, illegally; by tomorrow he will be out of the country. What? Her brother wants to abandon our young socialist republic? Her brother wants to betray the revolution? Her brother wants to become an emigre? Doesn't she realize what being an emigre means? Doesn't she realize that every emigre automatically becomes an agent of the foreign espionage services that are trying to destroy our country?

26.11. my soul. Does God have a soul? This is the only place in the Torah that refers to the deity's nepeš (although a related verbal form, wayyinnāpaš, ocurs in Exod 31:17). Elsewhere, the word refers to the living quality in humans and animals and is associated with breath. It is usually understood to mean soul, person, being, and life. It might possibly help us to understand what is meant by creation in the image of God, but that seems unlikely since animals are said to have a nepeš there as well, but they are not said to be in the divien image (Gen 1:24-27). We must be cautious in using the word's occurrences here to conclude anything about the Torah's conception of God, because both of these occurrences are in the phrase "my soul will scorn." This phrase may simply have been a known expression.

The preponderance of an altruistic way of valuing is the result of a consciousness of the fact that one is botched and bungled. Upon examination, this point of view turns out to be: "I am not worth much," simply a psychological valuation; more plainly still: it is the feeling of impotence, of the lack of the great self-asserting impulses of power (in muscles, nerves, and ganglia). This valuation gets translated, according to the particular culture of these classes, into a moral or religious principle (the pre-eminence of religious or moral precepts is always a sign of low culture): it tries to justify itself in spheres whence, as far as it is concerned, the notion "value" hails. The interpretation by means of which the Christian sinner tries to understand himself, is an attempt at justifying his lack of power and of self-confidence: he prefers to feel himself a sinner rather than feel bad for nothing: it is in itself a symptom of decay when interpretations of this sort are used at all. In some cases the bungled and the botched do not look for the reason of their unfortunate condition in their own guilt (as the Christian does), but in society: when, however, the Socialist, the Anarchist, and the Nihilist are conscious that their existence is something for which some one must be guilty, they are very closely related to the Christian, who also believes that he can more easily endure his ill ease and his wretched constitution when he has found some one whom he can hold responsible for it. The instinct of revenge and resentment appears in both cases here as a means of enduring life, as a self-preservative measure, as is also the favour shown to altruistic theory and practice. The hatred of egoism, whether it be one's own (as in the case of the Christian), or another's (as in the case of the Socialists), thus appears as a valuation reached under the predominance of revenge; and also as an act of prudence on the part of the preservative instinct of the suffering, in the form of an increase in their feelings of co-operation and unity. ... At bottom, as I have already suggested, the discharge of resentment which takes place in the act of judging, rejecting, and punishing egoism (one's own or that of others) is still a self-preservative measure on the part of the bungled and the botched. In short: the cult of altruism is merely a particular form of egoism, which regularly appears under certain definite physiological circumstances. When the Socialist, with righteous indignation, cries for "justice," "rights," "equal rights," it only shows that he is oppressed by his inadequate culture, and is unable to understand why he suffers: he also finds pleasure in crying; if he were more at ease he would take jolly good care not to cry in that way: in that case he would seek his pleasure elsewhere. The same holds good of the Christian: he curses, condemns, and slanders the "world" and does not even except himself. But that is no reason for taking him seriously. In both cases we are in the presence of invalids who feel better for crying, and who find relief in slander.

We never have before us pure individuals, indivisible glaciers of beings, nor essences without place and without date. Not that they exist elsewhere, beyond our grasp, but because we are experiences, that is, thoughts that feel behind themselves the weight of the space, the time, the very Being they think, and which therefore do not hold under their gaze a serial space and time nor the pure idea of series, but have about themselves a time and a space that exist by piling up, by proliferation, by encroachment, by promiscuity—a perpetual pregnancy, perpetual parturition, generativity and generality, brute essence and brute existence, which are the nodes and antinodes of the same ontological vibration. And if one were to ask what is this indecisive milieu in which we find ourselves once the distinction between fact and essence is rejected, one must answer that it is the very sphere of our life, and of our life of knowledge...It would be naïve to seek solidity in a heaven of ideas or in a ground of meaning—it is neither above nor beneath the appearances, but at their joints; it is the tie that secretly connects an experience to its variants.

12. “Opportunity comes dressed as #Work I strongly doubt if "opportunity" ever comes with the sweet taste of milk. Each time we say things are difficult, we are simply affirming a fundamental Truth that the moments of our lives, our active engagement of time, space are all founded on the platform called; Opportunity! It is the way God designed it to be, so that no one will suffer any disadvantage, so that the least capable will still be able to live a significantly successful life; if they can see the #opportunity clothed in the jacket of #work... When #opportunity calls only those with the right capacity can exploit it. As a young person, if you desire public leadership, then take time to build these 5 areas; Intellectual Capacity Emotional Capacity Relational Capacity Legal Capacity Moral Capacity The fact that the door is open doesn't mean you can walk through it; you will need the right of access and the acquisition of these values will naturally give you access to public leadership opportunities here in Nigeria and elsewhere

From the pathogen’s perspective, humans are what epidemiologists call an “accidental host” of many zoonoses, meaning that the pathogen usually fails to complete its life cycle in man alone. In other words, it can “afford” (evolutionarily speaking) to kill humans at staggering rates, because its natural reservoir is elsewhere.

Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever’s around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the floor. This cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading toward something, probably an armchair. And you can tell from the way she’s moving: she is headed toward. Maman just went by in the direction of the front door, she’s going out shopping and in fact she already is out, her movement anticipating itself. I don’t really know how to explain it, but when we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both here and at the same time not here because we’re already in the process of going elsewhere, if you see what I mean.

PJ slammed his hand on the counter again. “Damn it! I WANT SATISFACTION!” Samantha took this latest outburst as her cue to leave the office. Derrick resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Who the hell doesn’t want satisfaction? “Have you spoken with your designer?” “I don’t want to talk to her,” PJ snapped. “I want my money back. I’m taking my business elsewhere.” The words were like music to Derrick’s ears. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to get this idiot out of his hair. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, he said silently. By all means, go make life miserable for our competition.

When he puts it like this, it sounds surprisingly sensible. Danes have a collective sense of responsibility – of belonging, even. They pay into the system because they believe it to be worthwhile. The insanely high taxation also has some happy side effects. It means that Denmark has the lowest income inequality among all the OECD countries, so the difference in take-home wages between, for instance, Lego’s CEO and its lowliest cleaner, isn’t as vast as it might be elsewhere. Studies show that people who live in neighbourhoods where most people earn about the same amount are happier, according to research from San Francisco State University and the University of California Berkeley. In Denmark, even people working in wildly different fields will probably have a similar amount left in the bank each month after tax. I’m interested in the idea that income equality makes for better neighbours and want to put it to the test. But since I live in what is essentially a retirement village, where no one apart from Friendly Neighbour works, there isn’t much of an opportunity in Sticksville. So I ask Helena C about hers. She tells me that the street she lives in is populated by shop assistants, supermarket workers, accountants, lawyers, marketers and a landscape gardener. ‘Everyone has a nice home and a good quality of life,’ she says, ‘it doesn’t matter so much what you do for work here.’ Regardless of their various careers and the earning potential that this might afford them in other countries with lower taxes, professionals and non-professionals live harmoniously side by side in Denmark. This also makes social mobility easier, according to studies from The Equality Trust on the impact of income equality. So you’re more likely to be able to get on in life, get educated and get a good job, regardless of who your parents are and what they do in Denmark than anywhere else. It turns out that it’s easier to live ‘The American Dream’ here than it’s ever likely to be in the US.

New York Times article from March 8, 1953, titled “Looking Back Two Billion Years.” “Obviously,” Edmond said, “this experiment raised some eyebrows. The implications could have been earth-shattering, especially for the religious world. If life magically appeared inside this test tube, we would know conclusively that the laws of chemistry alone are indeed enough to create life. We would no longer require a supernatural being to reach down from heaven and bestow upon us the spark of Creation. We would understand that life simply happens…as an inevitable by-product of the laws of nature. More importantly, we would have to conclude that because life spontaneously appeared here on earth, it almost certainly did the same thing elsewhere in the cosmos, meaning: man is not unique; man is not at the center of God’s universe; and man is not alone in the universe.” Edmond exhaled. “However, as many of you may know, the Miller-Urey experiment failed. It produced a few amino acids, but nothing even closely resembling life. The chemists tried repeatedly, using different combinations of ingredients, different heat patterns, but nothing worked. It seemed that life—as the faithful had long believed—required divine intervention. Miller and Urey eventually abandoned their experiments. The religious community breathed a sigh of relief, and the scientific community went back to the drawing board.” He paused, an amused glimmer in his eyes. “That is, until 2007…when there was an unexpected development.” Edmond now told the tale of how the forgotten Miller-Urey testing vials had been rediscovered in a closet at the University of California in San Diego after Miller’s death. Miller’s students had reanalyzed the samples using far more sensitive contemporary techniques—including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry—and the results had been startling. Apparently, the original Miller-Urey experiment had produced many more amino acids and complex compounds than Miller had been able to measure at the time. The new analysis of the vials even identified several important nucleobases—the building blocks of RNA, and perhaps eventually…DNA. “It was an astounding science story,” Edmond concluded, “relegitimizing the notion that perhaps life does simply happen…without divine intervention. It seemed the Miller-Urey experiment had indeed been working, but just needed more time to gestate. Let’s remember one key point: life evolved over billions of years, and these test tubes had been sitting in a closet for just over fifty. If the timeline of this experiment were measured in miles, it was as if our perspective were limited to only the very first inch…” He let that thought hang in the air. “Needless to say,” Edmond went on, “there was a sudden resurgence in interest surrounding the idea of creating life in a lab.” I remember that, Langdon thought. The Harvard biology faculty had thrown

Fesko also misreads the contrast that Calvin subsequently draws in the Institutes between the “law” and “gospel.” Fesko interprets Calvin’s contrast to teach a real contrast between the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace (at least at some level) and the gospel of Jesus Christ. According to Fesko, the contrast is that between the Mosaic covenant, which communicates a “works principle” for obtaining life, and the gospel, which communicates a promise of life by grace through faith in Christ alone. However, the passage that Fesko adduces for his understanding of this contrast shows that Calvin identifies the contrast as that between a “legalistic” misappropriation of the law of Moses, abstracted from its setting within the broader administration of the Mosaic covenant and used as a means of justification before God, and the gospel. In the passage to which Fesko appeals, Calvin is explaining the contrast in Hebrews between the law and the gospel, and the reason the author appeals to the promise of Jeremiah 31:31–34. In his explanation, Calvin maintains that the contrast is between the law in the narrowest sense, namely, in terms of what it demands, promises, and threatens, and the gospel. However, this contrast is not between the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace and the gospel, since the Mosaic administration also reveals God’s promises of mercy and gracious correction of human depravity. For the apostle [author of Hebrews] speaks more opprobriously of the law than the prophet does—not simply in respect to the law itself, but, because of certain wretches who aped the law and, by their perverse zeal for ceremonies, obscured the clarity of the gospel. Their error and stupid predilection prompt Paul to discuss the nature of the law. It behooves us therefore to note that particular point in Paul. But both Jeremiah and Paul, because they are contrasting the Old and New Testaments, consider nothing in the law except what properly belongs to it. For example: the law contains here and there promises of mercy, but because they have been borrowed from elsewhere, they are not counted part of the law, when only the nature of the law is under discussion. They ascribe to it only this function: to enjoin what is right, to forbid what is wicked; to promise a reward to the keepers of righteousness, and threaten transgressors with punishment; but at the same time not to change or correct the depravity of heart that by nature inheres in all men.15 For Calvin, the law as such was never intended to play an independent role within the broader administration of the Mosaic covenant, which was an evangelical covenant that communicated the gospel of God’s gracious promise of salvation through Christ. The contrast between the “law” and the “gospel,” therefore, is not between the Mosaic administration and the gospel. In Calvin’s view, when the apostle Paul and other NT writers oppose the “law” and the “gospel,” they are speaking of the law in the narrowest sense, wrested from its evangelical setting and misappropriated by those who falsely boast of their justification before God through obedience to the law’s demands. Though the law is holy and good, it can only demand perfect obedience and remind its recipients of the consequences of any failure to do what it requires. When the law is viewed in isolation from its evangelical setting, it can only condemn fallen sinners who are incapable of doing what it requires. Contrary to Fesko’s reading of Calvin, there is no basis for interpreting Calvin to teach that the Mosaic administration included at some level a kind of “legal” covenant that republished the prelapsarian covenant of works.

Paul is applying to marriage a general principle about the Christian life—namely, that all Christians who really understand the gospel undergo a radical change in the way they relate to people. In Philippians 2: 2–3, Paul says bluntly that Christians should “in humility consider others better than [them] selves.” Notice that he doesn’t say that we should unrealistically try to believe that all others are better than us in every way. That would be nonsense. Rather, we should consider and count the interests of others as more important than our own. Elsewhere he says that we should not “please ourselves” but rather should “please our neighbor, for his own good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself” (Romans 15: 1–3). Paul goes so far as to tell Christians to be douloi of one another (Galatians 5: 13)—literally bond-servants. Because Christ humbled himself and became a servant and met our needs even at the cost of his own life, now we are like servants—but to one another.

the two men had not been close, Muhammad would never have asked what he did. He’d never have felt he had the right to even broach the idea. So when he requested the hand of abu-Talib’s daughter Fakhita in marriage, he certainly cannot have expected to be refused. Yet he was. This was no tale of young star-crossed lovers, however. Marriage in the sixth century was a far more pragmatic arrangement. We know nothing of Fakhita aside from her name. Muhammad’s proposal was made to the father, not the daughter. In effect, he was asking abu-Talib to publicly acknowledge their closeness by declaring him not just “like a son” but a full member of the family. He would no longer be merely a poor relation who had risen in the world, but a son-in-law. Abu-Talib’s decision had nothing to do with the fact that Muhammad and Fakhita were first cousins. Gregor Mendel and the science of genetics were still eleven hundred years in the future, and marriage between cousins was as common in the sixth century, both in Arabia and elsewhere, as it had been in biblical times. It was considered a means of strengthening the internal bonds of a clan, and indeed would remain so in the marriage patterns of European royalty well into the twentieth century. So there is only one possible reason for abu-Talib’s denial of his nephew’s request: he did not consider this an advantageous marriage for his daughter. No matter how much he trusted and relied on Muhammad, the father was not about to marry his daughter to an orphan with no independent means. He intended for her to marry into the Meccan elite, and quickly made a more suitably aristocratic match for her. If Bahira had indeed foreseen a great future for Muhammad, abu-Talib had clearly not taken him seriously. And if Muhammad had imagined that he had overcome the limitations of his childhood, he was now harshly reminded that they still applied. Abu-Talib’s denial of his request carried a clear message. “This far and no further,” he was saying in effect. “Good but not good enough.” In his uncle’s mind, Muhammad was still “one of us, yet not one of us.” In time, abu-Talib would come to regret this rejection of Muhammad. The two men would eventually overcome the rift it caused between them and become closer than ever. But in a pattern that was to recur throughout Muhammad’s life, rejection would work to his long-term advantage. Abu-Talib’s denial of him as a son-in-law would turn out to be one of those ironic twists that determine history—or, if you wish to see things that way, fate. If Muhammad had married his cousin, nobody today might even know his name. Without the woman he did go on to marry, he might never have found the courage and determination to undertake the major role that waited for him.

If the two men had not been close, Muhammad would never have asked what he did. He’d never have felt he had the right to even broach the idea. So when he requested the hand of abu-Talib’s daughter Fakhita in marriage, he certainly cannot have expected to be refused. Yet he was. This was no tale of young star-crossed lovers, however. Marriage in the sixth century was a far more pragmatic arrangement. We know nothing of Fakhita aside from her name. Muhammad’s proposal was made to the father, not the daughter. In effect, he was asking abu-Talib to publicly acknowledge their closeness by declaring him not just “like a son” but a full member of the family. He would no longer be merely a poor relation who had risen in the world, but a son-in-law. Abu-Talib’s decision had nothing to do with the fact that Muhammad and Fakhita were first cousins. Gregor Mendel and the science of genetics were still eleven hundred years in the future, and marriage between cousins was as common in the sixth century, both in Arabia and elsewhere, as it had been in biblical times. It was considered a means of strengthening the internal bonds of a clan, and indeed would remain so in the marriage patterns of European royalty well into the twentieth century. So there is only one possible reason for abu-Talib’s denial of his nephew’s request: he did not consider this an advantageous marriage for his daughter. No matter how much he trusted and relied on Muhammad, the father was not about to marry his daughter to an orphan with no independent means. He intended for her to marry into the Meccan elite, and quickly made a more suitably aristocratic match for her. If Bahira had indeed foreseen a great future for Muhammad, abu-Talib had clearly not taken him seriously. And if Muhammad had imagined that he had overcome the limitations of his childhood, he was now harshly reminded that they still applied. Abu-Talib’s denial of his request carried a clear message. “This far and no further,” he was saying in effect. “Good but not good enough.” In his uncle’s mind, Muhammad was still “one of us, yet not one of us.” In time, abu-Talib would come to regret this rejection of Muhammad. The two men would eventually overcome the rift it caused between them and become closer than ever. But in a pattern that was to recur throughout Muhammad’s life, rejection would work to his long-term advantage. Abu-Talib’s denial of him as a son-in-law would turn out to be one of those ironic twists that determine history—or, if you wish to see things that way, fate. If Muhammad had married his cousin, nobody today might even know his name. Without the woman he did go on to marry, he might never have found the courage and determination to undertake the major role that waited for him.

And Italians aren’t as sneaky, rude, mean and lazy as we Moldovans are. They aren’t such knuckledragging knuckleheads. They even dress differently. Their clothes are just like their country. Happy and festive! The people are beautiful. They all sing Italy’s praises, because there’s what to sing about. Not like Moldova, which asks you for love, but is less of a motherland than a step-motherland!

The drama and the development of the play’s ideas arise from a triangular tension implied in the above structure. The fundamental conflict of the play, even more important than the conflicts among the characters, is among the three organizational paradigms at work in the play’s structure. The first paradigm is the reversed chronology of the plot or the play’s basic, backward-moving narrative structure. The second is directly opposed to the first: the implied, ineluctable forward movement of time. The third overlays the other two: a cyclical structure based in the play’s method of repetition and variation. The backward-moving narrative structure emphasizes two ideas we have already seen elsewhere. The first is a more elaborate development of the life-is-a-journey metaphor that Ben Stone employed in “The Road You Didn’t Take.” The second is the idea of a life’s meaning being governed by the anticipated completion of a goal, the point of narrative closure that makes a complete, meaning-providing structure for a life story. Both ideas are established in the opening number, “Merrily We Roll Along,” which is reprised throughout the show as a means of segueing from scene to scene and year to year. The song introduces the image of the dream as the goal one’s life is aiming for, the end of the journey and, more than that, the thing that gives the journey its purpose and meaning. The ensemble sings: Dreams don’t die, So keep an eye on your dream [….] Time goes by And hopes go dry, But you still can try For your dream. (F 383) Like Ben, the ensemble has conflicting feelings about life’s journey. In a counterpoint section, one half of the ensemble sings “Plenty of roads to try,” while the other

To the ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment that is considered more important, even though the future never comes except as the present moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.

Tomorrow I'm to leave your grave for good. Someone loves me and wants a life with me elsewhere, beyond other borders, where other languages are spoken. To my shock I'd said yes, lit by the hot-faced enthusiasm always lurking at the bottom of a second boulevardier; and when I woke up the next morning, I'd realized I'd mean it.

If our work does not support our soul, then the soul will exact its butcher’s bill elsewhere.