Non Conform Quotes

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.

You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me.

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.

The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Non-conformity is the only real passion worth being ruled by.

Society demands conformity at the expense of individual liberty. Let us be for once a non conformist to be fully alive.

We must beware of yielding to the pressure of a spirit of cowardly conformity which proclaims itself everybody's friend in the hope that everybody will obligingly return the compliment.

Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.

Unreasonable," "unrealistic," and "impractical" are all words used to marginalize a person or idea that fails to conform with conventionally expected standards.

Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality.

I'm not here to be small, to compare, to judge (myself or you), to fit in or to be perfect. I'm here to grow, to learn, to love, to be human.

Shapers” are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.

When I was really small I thought I’d do anything to change whatever was wrong with me. Now I didn’t want to change, I just wanted people to stop being mad at me all the time.

Conformity requires us to minimize our differences for the greater good. We fear that if we don't conform, we will be abandoned, but there is no loneliness like having people only see you after you've erased yourself.

I can’t change the world, I can only change how I choose to live in it.

WHAT YOU DON’T DO DOESN’T MATTER

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

What if you save for 40 years, putting off all kinds of opportunities, then get hit by a bus the day before retirement? Better to plan for the future while also living in the present.

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help others out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

Some gender non-conforming people are nonbinary, and some are men and women. It depends on each person’s experience. Two people can look similar and be completely different genders. Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be. No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide.

When we really get serious about our insecurities, we usually find that three specific fears emerge: the fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of change.

For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

She was an extraordinary person too! Would you believe it, she cut her hair short, and used to go about in men’s boots in bad weather

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help other out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

The scrutiny on our bodies distracts us from what's really going on here: control. The emphasis on our appearance distracts us from the real focus: power.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: you have no one to blame. —ERICA JONG

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place.

Gender non-conforming people face considerable distress not because we have a disorder, but because of stigma and discrimination. There is nothing wrong with us, what is wrong is a world that punishes us for not being normatively masculine or feminine.

Gender non-conformity is seen as something immature, something we have to grow out of to become adults.

People say that what we’re seeking is a meaning for life,” he began before clarifying, “I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. What we seek is an experience of being alive.

Conform or die. That was his motto. I am oddly doing bits of both, each half-assedly.

Arguments against gender non-conforming people are about maintaining power and control. Most can be grouped into four categories: dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope.

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be saying.

How are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don't even believe that you exist? The assumption is that being a masculine man or a feminine woman is normal, and that being "us" is an accessory. Like if you remove our clothing, our makeup, and our pronouns, underneath the surface we are just men and women playing dress-up.

Gender non-conforming people are not opportunisitic; we are oppressed.

ROBERT ROTH: Going against the tide, no matter how gracefully, will beat you up after a while — all artists know this.

It's a surreal experience to have your personhood be reduced to a prop.

You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.

Our goal is more modest: We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

This repression is something we first did to ourselves. We know how to do it so well to other people because we were the first testing grounds. We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in. We thought fitting in would give us security—but is it security when someone else living their life differently unsettles us to our very core?

11 WAYS TO BE UNREMARKABLY AVERAGE 1. Accept what people tell you at face value. 2. Don’t question authority. 3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you want to learn something. 4. Go overseas once or twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England. 5. Don’t try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English. 6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it. 7. Think about writing a book, but never do it. 8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it. 9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work. 10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself. 11. Jump through hoops. Check off boxes.

my top five core values are non-conformity, self-reliance, kindness, honesty, and courage.” “Top five of how many total?” “Twelve.” I can’t see his smile, but I can feel it. “Let’s have the rest.” “Curiosity. Freedom. Persistence. Learning. Humor. Gratitude. Solitude.

A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. A free society fertilizes the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it. Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.

Imagine everyone you encounter all day long telling you that you are not real and that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Being constantly invalidated takes a toll: 40 percent of trans and gender non-conforming people have attempted suicide.

From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility.

Genius is non-conformity.

People judge gender non-conformity because they are insecure about their identities. If they weren’t, then gender variance wouldn’t be so heavily policed.

The concept of deferred gratification, or sacrificing now to save for the future, can be helpful in setting aside money in a retirement account for old age. It can also serve as an effective rationalization for life avoidance.

...for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celbrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

It's because of my grandfather that I became a Young Avenger. But it's hard sometimes, to be a black kid carrying a name like "Patriot". I remember talking to Captain America about before he died, and he explained what Patriotism meant to him... It wasn't about blindly supporting your government. It was about knowing what your country could be, what it should be... And trying to lead it there through your example. And holding it accountable when it failed. I remember he said: "There's noting patriotic about corruption or cover-ups... or defending them. But exposing them, well, that takes a hero.

The truth is, that we are in a state of emergency. In the past few years, we have seen an onslaught of legislation... targeting gender non-conforming people... Our communities are under attack. Regardless of whether these pieces of legislation pass, the fact that they're even being considered suggests just how disposable we are considered to be.

At a fundamental level, we are still having to argue for the very ability to exist. The truth is, I still cannot go outside without being afraid for my safety. There are few spaces where I do not experience harassment for the way I look.

The rise of Milo, Trump and the alt-right are not evidence of the return of the conservatism, but instead of the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence for its own sake – an aesthetic that suits those who believe in nothing but the liberation of the individual and the id, whether they’re on the left or the right. The principle-free idea of counterculture did not go away; it has just become the style of the new right.

We silenced our own differences, subdued our creativity, and toned down our own gender non-conformity in order to fit in.

You can’t keep a good woman down who sucks at being subservient.

In order to lead the orchestra, you must first turn your back to the crowd.

The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader." - Quoting Derek Sivers

If your organization is not formally committed to a policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression or gender presentation in its employment practices, you should not expect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender-nonconforming, queer, and/or questioning patients and families to feel safe seeking out your services.

Here’s to the misfits and foolish ones who think differently. They’re not fond of simplicity. They live unconventionally existing at a different level of intensity. They add elasticity and flexibility to what’s inflexibly rigid, bringing warmth to the frigid systems of existence. You can hate them acidicly, discredit their credibility or even oppose them ritualistically. Look down on them cynically, say they became great accidentally, rain on them torrentially or see brilliance academically. You can look and see density or see a lovely symphony. About the only thing you can’t do is disqualify their eligibility. Because they change history. Everything in existence moves them restlessly on to destiny backed by infinity. Their spirit is immensity, they overcome resiliently and follow their hearts existentially. Though they may be misunderstood until the next century, we see their opponents’ adrenaline as only minimally convincing, simply for a time because in them there’s a tendency for the divine to visit earth coincidentally. And while others may see misfits and foolishness we see wisdom and genius because the ones crazy enough to think they can live and love limitlessly are the ones who actually do.

For all their talk of democracy, the conquerors worked hard to engineer consensus; and on many critical issues, they made clear that the better part of political wisdom was silence and conformism. So well did they succeed in reinforcing this consciousness that after they left, and time passed, many non-Japanese including Americans came to regard such attitudes as peculiarly Japanese.

Psychologists discovered that there are two routes to achievement: conformity and originality. Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.

The impetus that makes you fly is the great store of humanity that each of us possesses. It's the feeling of interconnectedness with the roots of all power, but we soon get alarmed by it! It's damned dangerous! And so most people are glad to give up flying; they prefer walking on the sidewalk, following the rules and regulations.

All the girls and women looked pretty much the same, so did all the boys and men. I couldn't find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always searching.

The real crisis is not that gender non-conforming people exist, it's that we have been taught to believe in only two genders in the first place.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. —DALE CARNEGIE

If a minority culture doesn't accept you as much as majority culture, think about following a path of non-conformity

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas. —VICTOR HUGO

Always do what you are afraid to do. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

It is sad how often love and acceptance are conditional on how well we can conform. That even in the smallest acts of gender non-conformity, love can be lost.

I’ve taken off for long runs in dozens of world cities without a map or any knowledge of the local language.

Non-Conformity The path of non-conformity never takes the shortest distance between two points. It's convoluted like our prefrontal cortex.

The second best thing to not chasing success is chasing success that was defined by you, not for you.

In some cases, it is not the person that has changed, but their decision not to be themselves.

When out in public, and are uncertain of a person's gender… stop worrying about it. It doesn't matter. They are a person.

If you're wonderful in any way somebody will fuck with you. Just like if you're horrible in any way they're gonna fuck with you. The world is for the average and the common. Those are the people who never hurt - they just fall asleep. The rest of us, we're The Walking Wounded.

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis. In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness. Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution. We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised for the achievement of high ends, has too frequently been used by the Nation and the States as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons. Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of attainder. The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify "togetherness" when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others. In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security. The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification. Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution.

Mede stood accused of heresy. He had been seen out on the fields pointing an instrument at the Sun, a device, they said, for measuring distances. He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.

It is deeply conservative to suggest that any sufficiently difficult woman from history -- say, one who rebelled against the constraints of femininity by dressing and acting in a masculine way -- must have been a man.

Islamic legal rulings stipulate that a treaty cannot be forever, since it must be immediately void should the Muslims become capable of fighting them.” What these treaties did not imply was a permanent system in which the Islamic state would interact on equal terms with sovereign non-Muslim states: “The communities of the dar al-harb were regarded as being in a ‘state of nature,’ for they lacked legal competence to enter into intercourse with Islam on the basis of equality and reciprocity because they failed to conform to its ethical and legal standards.” Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts.

Now that you have a bit of respect, you value your standing in the group and don’t want to jeopardize it. To maintain and then gain status, you play a game of follow-the-leader, conforming to prove your worth as a group member. As

The acceptance of authority is caused by disturbance and disorder. The effect is the authority, and the reaction to that is to conform or to deny. This very denial assumes another form of authority. Where there is no freedom, there must be authority. This brings about suppression, control or escape, and the very movement of these culminates in a principle or belief, a standard which assumes dominance. The cause is never permanent; the cause becomes the effect and the effect becomes the next cause. When this is clearly understood, not intellectually but actually, then the negation of this chain is freedom. Knowledge has its own authority-experience and memory. But as long as one remains within that field, the creative movement of freedom is non-existent. Freedom is space, and space is order.

So I get a little tired of having to swallow my lived experience to be force-fed someone else's what-ifs. I get tired of my safety coming second. I get tired of the realities of trans and gender non-conforming people's lives being overshadowed and ignored in favour of a boogey-man that might be lurking in the ladies' room. I get really tired of being mistaken for a monster. I get tired of swallowing all these bathroom stories and smiling politely. But the last thing I can do is allow myself to get angry. Because if I get angry, then I am seen as even more of a threat. Then it's all my fault, isn't it? Because then there is a man in the ladies' room, and for some reason, he's angry.

Non ; cette fois j’ai gagé que je t’emmènerais ; allons, viens, mauvaise tête, et ne trouble le plaisir de personne. Chacun son tour ; c’était hier le tien, aujourd’hui tu es passé de mode ; celui qui ne sait pas se conformer à son sort est aussi fou qu’un vieillard qui fait le jeune homme.

Bullying has its root cause in the need for adoration. If adoration is not fulfilled, the bully seeks to control a group through deceit and punishment of the individual who is perceived as being Non-Conforming. Adoration is a form of comfort. Take away the comfort, you dis-empower the bully.

If you’re stuck in the cage, it’s time to smash the glass around you and crawl your way out. You don’t need anyone’s permission to climb the ladder, and you don’t need to apologize for escaping. If the sleepwalking life is the “real world” of the unremarkably average, the clear alternative is the living world of adventure.

In a sense the dramatic dialogue is both the fullest symbol and the final justification of the city's life. For the same reason, the most revealing symbol of the city's failure, of its very non-existence as a social personality, is the absence of dialogue-not necessarily a silence, but equally the loud sound of a chorus uttering the same words in cowed if complacent conformity. The silence of a dead city has more dignity than the vocalisms of a community that knows neither detachment nor dialectic opposition, neither ironic comment nor stimulating disparity, neither an intelligent conflict nor an active moral resolution. Such a drama is bound to have a fatal last act.

You were showing him your muscle?” I froze, wondering how much she had seen. She smiled. “Sometimes it’s better to let boys think they're stronger,” she told me.

Sometimes old people have really old-fashioned ideas, but that doesn't mean I have to go along with them.

To creative people, the compendium of the white man's dialect are unfashionable, because their creations are more than what the tongue could say.

Asking us to push away the very walls that are constantly crushing us into small, confined boxes is toxic.

Many people are uncomfortable with change and different ideas, and they’ll work hard at rationalizing their own choices when they come across someone who has made different ones.

the person who says something is impossible should not interrupt the person who is doing it.

order, my top five core values are non-conformity, self-reliance, kindness, honesty, and courage.

Non-conformity is an illness. We’re possible sources of contagion.

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs . . . Whoso would be a man must also be a non-conformist.

The very essence of Australia is our lack of sophistication–our refusal to conform to pretension and superficiality. We ought to be upholding our ‘fair-dinkumness’ and all the qualities so well documented in our folklore, the non-conformity of the swagman in Waltzing Matilda whose down to earth motto would I’m sure, have been ‘I’d rather be ignorant and fair dinkum than sophisticated and false’. Of course life has been a fight against ignorance, but the danger has always been that gaining knowledge rarely occurs without an increase in sophistication or falseness.

Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.

[...], je découvrais que les adultes n'était pas conformes à ce qu'ils disaient être. Qu'ils agissaient par rapport à la société, non par conviction profonde. C'est ce que, toute ma vie, je reprocherai aux un et aux autres: agir sans croyance.

Does one need to deceive oneself, to understand self-deception! If not, then why do you deceive yourself, by conforming to the social labels, be it a religious label, a non-religious label, a nationalist label, an intellectual label, or a gender label.

C'est encore à partir du centre et non de l'extérieur que je peux ordonner. Si je ne fais que me conformer à une idée, aussi sublime soit-elle, cela signifie que quelque part existe la violence qui en est le corollaire, car se conformer n'implique-t-il pas déformer ? (p.250)

My father was, I suppose, a crank. He had a fine, precise mind which ignored what it was not interested in. Without being a misanthrope he was unsociable and non-conforming. He had his own unorthodox theories of education, one of which was that I should not be sent to school.

I’d rather regret something I did than wish I had done something (but sat it out due to fear or other commitments). Let’s embrace more of life, not less. Balanced people don’t change the world, and I’d rather spend my time feeling worn out from meaningful activities and projects.

God, as represented in Scripture, by nature, is the true non-conformist. He does not need to conform to any truth; He does not need to conform to some moral law. It proclaims that He is the Truth; He defines Morality: the Great I Am, the Beginning and the End who radiates all that is Holy. Therefore, and unless we too were wholly holy and omniscient, we would do well to understand at the very least that even if this God were to wipe away all in existence, then despite my opinion or your opinion, His decision would be objectively good and moral simply because He is the one doing it.

A sprinkling of diners saying, 'We eat, but not amid normal surroundings. We are emancipated from normal sourroundings. It is extremely important that we eat off little red circular tables instead of big brown square tables in order to conform with our mission, which is that of non-conformity.

In the domain of primitive spirituality, that is, supernatural spirituality, the mind loses all its sanity in the name of non-conformity and takes nonsense to be a form of higher sense and supernatural insanity and fallacy to be spiritual sanity and truth. In an attempt to break free from the chains of religious orthodoxy as well as radical rationalism, these mysticism-obsessed beings, who pompously prefer to call themselves "lightworkers", "yogis", “mystics” and so on, end up bound in yet another form of orthodoxy or extremism, replete with the primal psychological germs of supernaturalism.

essence of Buddhism: The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

What gives me strength is the feeling of being independent. In effect, I'm really just a dilettante. I've lived, explored, and worked - but only in nonjobs. I've often achieved success against all the predictions. And I've done it by following a very simple pattern of behavior: stick at it and do everything in my power to make it happen.

The goal of white supremacy is to kill your sense of imagination, too. White supremacy cannot make sense of Black bodies, fat bodies, disabled bodies, dark-skinned bodies, trans bodies, gender non-conforming bodies—indeed any body that does not conform—without placing them within a hierarchy of value. White supremacy is the opposite of empathy.

Want me to say it? Want me to confess what makes me an actual felon and reserves me a choice spot in hell?” “Please, Alexandria Patra,” Preton said, “tell me all your regrets.” Her eyes narrowed. “I taught children to surrender their developing minds to concepts like the greater good or the good of society which can’t exist in any form in this world without actual kids being trampled underneath their untouchable banners.” Pointing at her own chest, she added, “I taught children that in order to live up to those ‘higher’ ideals they must be obedient—to others, must sacrifice their dreams—to the needs of others. I taught them it was more important to be a part of a group than to stand on their own judgment. I told the non-conforming kids they should feel guilty for wanting to live on their own terms.” Alexa swept a hand forward, pointing it at Preton. “I then delivered every ego-stripped, dream-crushed child to the power mongers of the world like you, who will use this universally accepted mirage of morality to control them.

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, becomes a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent.

So acts every ‘man-in-the-street’ in our own society, so has acted the average member of any society through the past ages, and so acts the present-day savage; and the lower his level of cultural development, the greater stickler he will be for good manners, propriety and form, and the more incomprehensive and odious to him will be the non-conforming point of view.

The rise of Milo, Trump and the alt-right are not evidence of the return of the conservatism, but instead of the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence for its own sake – an aesthetic that suits those who believe in nothing but the liberation of the individual and the id, whether they’re on the left or the right.

We believe that great creators are born with a biological immunity to risk. They’re wired to embrace uncertainty and ignore social approval; they simply don’t worry about the costs of non-conformity the way the rest of us do. They’re programmed to be iconoclasts, rebels, revolutionaries, troublemakers, mavericks, and contrarians who are impervious to fear, rejection, and ridicule.

A school’s purpose wasn’t to enlighten anybody or to make them into a critical thinker. Schools existed only to train people for jobs, dulling their ability for critical thinking in the process, so that they could readily accept authority and mindless routine. In fact, when I read about the history of the school system that was commonly used in the world, I discovered that it came from the Middle Ages and was originally designed to teach people religion. And what did religious people do? They accepted absurd ideas without questioning. The same system that was designed to brainwash them—full of rote learning, non-questioning, conformity, and punishment—was the same one that was still being used today. Why? Because it worked. At least most of the time. For some reason, it hadn’t worked on me.

One can go to Our Lord Jesus or the Most Holy Trinity directly, not excluding, however, the most holy Mother, for to tend toward God without Mary, if it is with an express exclusion of her, is pride and something diabolical, and the essence of sin is always pride, that is, non-conformity with the will of God; and the will of God is this, that we go to Him by this road, that is, through the most holy Mother.

Today, we each need to guard against various large and small Outrage Machines of the political Left. Otherwise, we can be shunned, harassed, dogpiled, smeared, publicly shamed, devastatingly labelled, falsely accused of wrongdoing, or otherwise hurt and harmed for trivial, dubious, or non-existent transgressions. Our good reputations can be destroyed, our jobs can be threatened or ended, and our careers can be ruined.

Nella nostra concezione moderna del mondo ―concezione scientifica non ancora definitivamente conclusa― la superstizione è un po' fuori luogo; mentre era ammessa nella concezione di epoche prescientifiche, poiché ne era un complemento logico. Aveva dunque relativamente ragione l'antico Romano, che rinunciava ad un progetto importante perché il volo degli uccelli era sfavorevole; agiva in modo conforme alle sue premesse. E se rinunciava al suo progetto perché aveva inciampato sulla soglia della sua porta, si rivelava superiore a noi increduli, si rivelava miglior psicologo di noi. Il fatto d'inciampare denotava l'esistenza di un dubbio, di un'opposizione interiore a questo progetto, la cui forza poteva annullare quella della sua intenzione al momento della realizzazione. In effetti si può essere sicuri del successo completo solo quando tutte le energie psichiche tendono al fine desiderato.

Tout est parfaitement bien réglé dans nos esprits, et moins nous voyons telle personne en particulier et plus nous sommes heureux de constater, chaque fois que nous entendons parler d'elle, à quel point elle se conforme servilement à l'idée que nous nous faisons d'elle. Tout écart dans les destins que nous avons décrétés nous semblerait non seulement anormal mais immoral. Nous préfèrerions ne pas avoir connu du tout notre voisin, le marchand de hot-dogs en retraite, s'il s'avérait qu'il vient de produire le plus merveilleux recueil de poésies qu'ait connu son époque.

The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

En cette perpétuelle bataille que l'on appelle vivre, on cherche à établir un code de comportement adapté à la société, communiste ou prétendument libre, dans laquelle on a été élevé. Nous obéissons à certaines règles de conduite, en tant qu'elles sont parties intégrantes de notre tradition, hindoue, islamique, chrétienne ou autre. Nous avons recours à autrui pour distinguer la bonne et la mauvaise façon d'agir, la bonne et la mauvaise façon de penser. En nous y conformant, notre action et notre pensée deviennent mécaniques, nos réactions deviennent automatiques. Nous pouvons facilement le constater en nous-mêmes. Depuis des siècles, nous nous faisons alimenter par nos maîtres, par nos autorités, par nos livres, par nos saints, leur demandant de nous révéler tout ce qui existe au-delà des collines, au-delà des montagnes, audelà de la Terre. Si leurs récits nous satisfont, c'est que nous vivons de mots et que notre vie est creuse et vide : une vie, pour ainsi dire de « seconde main ». Nous avons vécu de ce que l'on nous a dit, soit à cause de nos tendances, de nos inclinations, soit parce que les circonstances et le milieu nous y ont contraints. Ainsi, nous sommes la résultante de toutes sortes d'influences et il n'y a rien de neuf en nous, rien que nous ayons découvert par nous-mêmes, rien d'originel, de non corrompu, de clair.

Nihilismul pasiv, înțeles ca «declin și diminuare a spiritului» sau ca reacțiune și «împotrivire», este o înțelegere a faptului că valorile sunt total depășite dar și constatarea imposibilității acțiunii. Subiectul său realizează că orizontul său a fost deplasat dar este incapabil de a crea o valoare nouă. Blazarea și inconsecvența îl fac să pactizeze cu lipsa de sens și scop generalizată. El poate fi caracterizat printr-o valorizare excesivă a somnului: «În sinele cel mai lăuntric: a nu ști încotro? Vidul. Încercarea de a-l depăși prin narcoză...» Cuvântul-cheie al nihilismului pasiv este absoluta sa noncombativitate («nu mai atacă»). Senină�tatea sa nu este câștigată printr-un conflict deschis, nu este consecința unor lupte interioare în care subiectul își depășește natura și ajunge la o liniște interioară indestructibilă; resemnarea nihilistului pasiv este postulată încă din principii, subiectul reușind să nu se abată de la directiva unei non-rezistențe pasive. Cu toate că știe că valorile sunt aneantizate, că orizontul său este vid, el încearcă să se relaxeze în timpul unui naufragiu. Pentru asta are nevoie de erastzuri ale suprasensibilului, de ficțiuni generalizate (sau de narcotice), care îi adorm conștiința, simulând o meta-realitate, ce înlocuiește evidența aneantizării universale, conform principiului «din când în când o leacă de otravă: te-ajută să visezi frumos».

In each of the following chapters, dealing in turn with policing and repression, culture and propaganda, religion and education, the economy, society and everyday life, racial policy and antisemitism, and foreign policy, the overriding imperative of preparing Germany and its people for a major war emerges clearly as the common thread. But that imperative was neither rational in itself, nor followed in a coherent way. In one area after another, the contradictions and inner irrationalities of the regime emerge; the Nazi's headlong rush to war contained the seeds of the Third Reich's eventual destruction. How and why this should be so is one of the major questions that run through this book and binds its separate parts together. So do many further questions: about the extent to which the Third Reich won over the German people; the manner in which it worked; the degree to which Hitler, rather than broader systematic factors inherent in the structure of the Third Reich as a whole, drove policy onward; the possibilities of opposition, resistence, and dissent or even non-conformity to the dictates of National Socialism under a dictatorship that claimed the total allegiance of all its citizens; the nature of the Third Reich's relationship with modernity; the ways in which its policies in different areas resembled, or differed from, those pursued elsewhere in Europe and beyond during the 1930s; and much more besides.

The person who is a lost sinner has a problem with sin. That is, he is under God’s wrath and curse, at alienation with God, an enemy of truth and righteousness. His relationship with God is warfare! And until one bows down to God in humble confession and commits himself in faith to Jesus Christ, he will never be reconciled to God. That’s the essence of sin: rebellion against the living God. The saved sinner, on the other hand, struggles with sins (plural). He now walks with Christ, but by the same faith seeks grace to overcome remaining habits and failures as the Spirit works to conform him to the image of Christ. What does this mean in practice? I do not spend time talking with a non-Christian about his sins. That’s not his problem. His problem is his sin: his broken relationship with God.

1. Close Friend, someone who got yo back, yo "main nigga." 2. Rooted in blackness and the Black experience. From a middle-aged social worker: "That Brotha ain like dem ol e-lights, he real, he a shonuff nigga" 3. Generic, neutral refrence to African Americans. From a 30 something college educated Sista: "The party was live, it was wall to wall niggaz there" 4. A sista's man/lover/partner. from the beauty shop. "Guess we ain gon be seein too much of girlfriend no mo since she got herself a new nigga" From Hip Hop artist Foxy brown, "Ain no nigga like the on I got." 5. Rebellious, fearless unconventional, in-yo-face Black man. From former NBA superstar Charles Barkley, "Nineties niggas... The DailyNews, The Inquirer has been on my back... They want their Black Athletes to be Uncle Tom. I told you white boys you've never heard of a 90s nigga. We do what we want to do" quoted in The Source, December 1992). 6. Vulgar, disrespectful Black Person, antisocial, conforming to negative sterotype of African Americans. From former Hip Hop group Arrested Development, in their best-selling song, "People Everyday" 1992: A black man actin like a nigga... got stomped by an African" 7. A cool, down person, rooted in Hip Hop and black culture, regardless of race, used today by non-blacks to refer to other non-Blacks. 8. Anyone engaged in inappropriate, negative behavior; in this sense, Blacks may even apply the term to White folk. According to African American scholar Clarence Major's From Juba to Jive, Queen Latifah was quoted in Newsweek as criticizing the US government with these words. "Those niggers don't know what the fuck they doing

Les pères!... Parlons-en. Des êtres à vomir! Ils sont le mal en personne. Ils sont chargés de tout ce qu'il y a de laid dans l'humanité. Il n'existe pas de père correct. C'est parce que le rôle des pères est mauvais. Les pères stricts, les pères doux, les pères modérés, sont tout aussi mauvais les uns que les autres. Ils nous barrent la route dans l'existence en se déchargeant sur nous de leurs complexes d'infériorité, de leurs aspirations non réalisées, de leurs ressentiments, de leurs idéaux, de leurs faiblesses qu'ils n'ont jamais avouées à personne, de leurs fautes, de leurs rêves suaves et des maximes auxquelles ils n'ont jamais eu le courage de se conformer; ceux qui sont les plus indifférents, comme mon père, ne font pas exception à la règle. Leur conscience les blesse parce qu'ils ne font jamais attention à leurs enfants et finalement ils voudraient que les enfants les comprennent.

All over the world in many cultures you’ll find gender non-conforming people – those who are traditionally third gender or gender-fluid or even agender. In some of these cultures, they are not only recognized, but also revered and honored, or treated as spiritual beings. In Hawaii, one can find the mahu, those who are biologically male or female, but having a gender identity between or encompassing both masculine and feminine, and whose social role is sacred. Some Native American people are two-spirit, while South Asia has their third gender called the hijra. Other cultures recognizing a third gender are Nigeria (yan daudu) , Samoa (fa’afafine), Thailand (kathoey), Mexico (muxe), and Tonga (fakaleiti). In yet other cultures, it is socially acceptable that some third genders are those who were assigned male, but live and behave as feminine and those who were born assigned female but live and behave as masculine.

...moderate social deviance or class non-conformism I have imputed to the first generation of pedestrians. Improved roads, after all, were one of the principal means by which the country was building a national communications network that would underpin the huge commercial and industrial expansion of the nineteenth century; changing the landscape of the country to produce the arterial interconnection of the modern state in place of a geography of more or less self-enclosed local communities; consolidating the administrative structures of the state and facilitating political hegemony over a rapidly growing and potentially unstable population; and promulgating a 'national' culture in the face of regional diversity and independence. With the main roads such powerful instruments of change, the walker's decision to exploit his freedom to resist the imperative of destination and explore instead by lanes, by-roads and fieldpaths, could well be interpreted as an act of denial, flight or dissent vis-a-vis the forces that were ineradicably transforming British society.

In the end, Buchanan was one of the paleocons to back Trump and many of those who formerly loathed most of what Yiannopoulos and what he represented decided to change their minds and back the winning horse, not only of Trump, but also of the new libertines of the online irreverent ‘punk’ right. Having lost Buchannan’s conservative culture war, they were perhaps strategically right to calculate that the only way they can ever have at least some of their ideas heard again would be to back a groping, lecherous, godless presidential candidate and a libertine figure such as Yiannopoulos and his army of online racist, foul-mouthed, porn-loving nihilists, who in many ways represent everything people like Buchannan are supposed to stand against. The rise of Milo, Trump and the alt-right are not evidence of the return of the conservatism, but instead of the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence for its own sake – an aesthetic that suits those who believe in nothing but the liberation of the individual and the id, whether they’re on the left or the right. The principle-free idea of counterculture did not go away; it has just become the style of the new right.

Lorsque je suis revenu de la côte est l’automne dernier, j’aurais aimé que le monde entier se conforme et se soumette pour toujours au même impératif moral; je voulais renoncer à ces aventures turbulentes qui m’avaient donné un aperçu privilégié sur les tréfonds de l’âme humaine. Seul Gatsby, l’homme qui donne son nom à ce livre, faisait figure d’exception – Gatsby qui représentait pourtant tout ce que je méprise profondément. Si la personnalité de quelqu’un est essentiellement la somme de tout ce qu’il a accompli, alors, oui, il y avait chez lui quelque chose de grandiose, une sensibilité accrue aux promesses de la vie, comme s’il était relié à l’une de ces machines complexes qui détectent les tremblements de terre à quinze mille kilomètres de distance. Cette réceptivité n’avait rien à voir avec la sensiblerie mollassonne qu’on honore sous le nom de « tempérament créatif ». C’était une aptitude extraordinaire à l’espoir, une vocation romantique que je n’ai jamais rencontrées chez personne d’autre et ne rencontrerai probablement jamais plus. Non : Gatsby, lui, a bien tourné finalement; en revanche, c’est ce qui a perdu Gatsby, cette écume nauséabonde qui flottait dans le sillage de ses rêves, qui a mis fin pour l’instant à mon intérêt pour les peines avortées et les élans brisés des humains.

TOUZENBACH Si vous voulez. De quoi parlerons-nous ? VERCHININE De quoi ? Rêvons ensemble... par exemple de la vie telle qu’elle sera après nous, dans deux ou trois cents ans. TOUZENBACH Eh bien, après nous on s’envolera en ballon, on changera la coupe des vestons, on découvrira peut-être un sixième sens, qu’on développera, mais la vie restera la même, un vie difficile, pleine de mystère, et heureuse. Et dans mille ans, l’homme soupirera comme aujourd’hui : « Ah ! qu’il est difficile de vivre ! » Et il aura toujours peur de la mort et ne voudra pas mourir. VERCHININE, après avoir réfléchi. Comment vous expliquer ? Il me semble que tout va se transformer peu à peu, que le changement s’accomplit déjà, sous nos yeux. Dans deux ou trois cents ans, dans mille ans peut-être, peu importe le délai, s’établira une vie nouvelle, heureuse. Bien sûr, nous ne serons plus là, mais c’est pour cela que nous vivons, travaillons, souffrons enfin, c’est nous qui la créons, c’est même le seul but de notre existence, et si vous voulez, de notre bonheur. Macha rit doucement. TOUZENBACH Pourquoi riez-vous ? MACHA Je ne sais pas. Je ris depuis ce matin. VERCHININE J’ai fait les mêmes études que vous, je n’ai pas été à l’Académie militaire. Je lis beaucoup, mais je ne sais pas choisir mes lectures, peut-être devrais-je lire tout autre chose ; et cependant, plus je vis, plus j’ai envie de savoir. Mes cheveux blanchissent, bientôt je serai vieux, et je ne sais que peu, oh ! très peu de chose. Pourtant, il me semble que je sais l’essentiel, et que je le sais avec certitude. Comme je voudrais vous prouver qu’il n’y a pas, qu’il ne doit pas y avoir de bonheur pour nous, que nous ne le connaîtrons jamais... Pour nous, il n’y a que le travail, rien que le travail, le bonheur, il sera pour nos lointains descendants. (Un temps.) Le bonheur n’est pas pour moi, mais pour les enfants de mes enfants. TOUZENBACH Alors, d’après vous, il ne faut même pas rêver au bonheur ? Mais si je suis heureux ? VERCHININE Non. TOUZENBACH, joignant les mains et riant. Visiblement, nous ne nous comprenons pas. Comment vous convaincre ? (Macha rit doucement. Il lui montre son index.) Eh bien, riez ! (À Verchinine :) Non seulement dans deux ou trois cents ans, mais dans un million d’années, la vie sera encore la même ; elle ne change pas, elle est immuable, conforme à ses propres lois, qui ne nous concernent pas, ou dont nous ne saurons jamais rien. Les oiseaux migrateurs, les cigognes, par exemple, doivent voler, et quelles que soient les pensées, sublimes ou insignifiantes, qui leur passent par la tête, elles volent sans relâche, sans savoir pourquoi, ni où elles vont. Elles volent et voleront, quels que soient les philosophes qu’il pourrait y avoir parmi elles ; elles peuvent toujours philosopher, si ça les amuse, pourvu qu’elles volent... MACHA Tout de même, quel est le sens de tout cela ? TOUZENBACH Le sens... Voilà, il neige. Où est le sens ? MACHA Il me semble que l’homme doit avoir une foi, du moins en chercher une, sinon sa vie est complètement vide... Vivre et ignorer pourquoi les cigognes volent, pourquoi les enfants naissent, pourquoi il y a des étoiles au ciel... Il faut savoir pourquoi l’on vit, ou alors tout n’est que balivernes et foutaises. Comme dit Gogol : « Il est ennuyeux de vivre en ce monde, messieurs. »

You killed a Christian? Fine. But if the victim had been a Muslim. . . The rules for restitution for wrongful death are also illuminating for Infidels. The Koran (2:178) establishes a law of retaliation (qisas) for murder: equal recompense must be given for the life of the victim, which can take the form of blood money (diyah): a payment to compensate for the loss suffered. In Islamic law (Sharia), the amount of compensation varies depending on the identity of the victim. ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), a Sharia manual that Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University certifies as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” says that the payment for killing a woman is half that to be paid for killing a man. Likewise, the penalty for killing a Jew or Christian is one-third that paid for killing a male Muslim.1 The Iranian Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh, one of the architects of the legal codes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, explains that punishments in Iran for other crimes differ as well, depending on whether the perpetrator is a Muslim. If a Muslim “commits adultery,” Tabandeh explains, “his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment.” (He is referring, of course, to a Muslim male; a Muslim female would in all likelihood be sentenced to be stoned to death.) “But if the man is not a Muslim,” Tabandeh continues, “and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution.”   Bible vs. Koran “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves.” —Koran 48:29 “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” —Matthew 7:12 Furthermore, if a Muslim kills a Muslim, he is to be executed, but if he kills a non-Muslim, he incurs a lesser penalty: “If a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash.

XVIII ALLA SUA DONNA                Cara beltà che amore             Lunge m’inspiri o nascondendo il viso,             Fuor se nel sonno il core             Ombra diva mi scuoti,         5  O ne’ campi ove splenda             Più vago il giorno e di natura il riso;             Forse tu l’innocente             Secol beasti che dall’oro ha nome,             Or leve intra la gente       10  Anima voli? o te la sorte avara             Ch’a noi t’asconde, agli avvenir prepara?                Viva mirarti omai             Nulla spene m’avanza;             S’allor non fosse, allor che ignudo e solo       15  Per novo calle a peregrina stanza             Verrà lo spirto mio. Già sul novello             Aprir di mia giornata incerta e bruna,             Te viatrice in questo arido suolo             Io mi pensai. Ma non è cosa in terra       20  Che ti somigli; e s’anco pari alcuna             Ti fosse al volto, agli atti, alla favella,             Saria, così conforme, assai men bella.                Fra cotanto dolore             Quanto all’umana età propose il fato,       25  Se vera e quale il mio pensier ti pinge,             Alcun t’amasse in terra, a lui pur fora             Questo viver beato:             E ben chiaro vegg’io siccome ancora             Seguir loda e virtù qual ne’ prim’anni       30  L’amor tuo mi farebbe. Or non aggiunse             Il ciel nullo conforto ai nostri affanni;             E teco la mortal vita saria             Simile a quella che nel cielo india.                Per le valli, ove suona       35  Del faticoso agricoltore il canto,             Ed io seggo e mi lagno             Del giovanile error che m’abbandona;             E per li poggi, ov’io rimembro e piagno             I perduti desiri, e la perduta       40  Speme de’ giorni miei; di te pensando,             A palpitar mi sveglio. E potess’io,             Nel secol tetro e in questo aer nefando,             L’alta specie serbar; che dell’imago,             Poi che del ver m’è tolto, assai m’appago.       45     Se dell’eterne idee             L’una sei tu, cui di sensibil forma             Sdegni l’eterno senno esser vestita,             E fra caduche spoglie             Provar gli affanni di funerea vita;       50  O s’altra terra ne’ superni giri             Fra’ mondi innumerabili t’accoglie,             E più vaga del Sol prossima stella             T’irraggia, e più benigno etere spiri;             Di qua dove son gli anni infausti e brevi,       55  Questo d’ignoto amante inno ricevi.

The forecasts that are potentially valuable are those that correctly foresee deviation from long-term trends and recent levels. If a forecaster makes a non-conforming, non-extrapolation prediction that turns out to be correct, the outcome is likely to come as a surprise to the other market participants. When they scramble to adjust their holdings to reflect it, the result is likely to be gains for the few who correctly foresaw it. There’s only one catch: since major deviations from trend (a) occur infrequently and (b) are hard to correctly predict, most unconventional, non-extrapolation forecasts turn out to be incorrect, and anyone who invests on their basis is usually likely to do below average.

Your mind is not one of a kind they said... She believed she had a non of a kind of a mind of their kind.

Fat womxn can be feminine. But it isn’t the be all and end all. We can be other things too. We can be alternative. We can be androgynous. We can be gender non-conforming and non-binary. We can be butch. We can be casual. We can be all these things and STILL have the right to exist and feel socially acceptable within society.

The easiest way to encourage non-conformity is to introduce a single dissenter. As entrepreneur Derek Sivers put it, “The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.” If you were sitting with seven other people and six group members picked the wrong answer, but the remaining one chose the correct answer, conformity dropped dramatically. Errors fell from 37 percent to just 5.5 percent. “The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its pressure,

a non-believing Jew may be counted as an adherent of Judaism so long as he does not identify himself with any other faith that conforms to his philosophical views.

The death of privacy means the death of human freedom. Imagine a world of complete neural connection: shared thoughts and feelings. People begin to organize and gain access to impressive knowledge. Equality and Unity rule the day. Division and strife seem as though they will end. But soon, as with all non-private systems, things go wrong. Coercive minds dominate others. Minority thinking is literally wiped out. Variety and quirkiness smooth to dull conformity. Harassment, thought impossible, begins to flourish; innovation and imagination, needing isolation to develop, slow to a crawl. Unique thoughts dissipate as minds sync-up to the buzz of sameness.

Overall, laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to champion major scientific upheavals. “The likelihood of this difference arising by chance is substantially less than one in a billion,” Sulloway observes. “Laterborns have typically been half a century ahead of firstborns in their willingness to endorse radical innovations.” Similar results emerged when he studied thirty-one political revolutions: laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to support radical changes. As a card-carrying firstborn, I was initially dismayed by these results. But as I learned about birth-order research, I realized that none of these patterns are set in stone. We don’t need to cede originality to laterborn children. By adopting the parenting practices that are typically applied primarily to younger children, we can raise any child to become more original. This chapter examines the family roots of originality. What’s unique about being a younger child, how does family size figure in, and what are the implications for nurture? And how can we account for the cases that don’t fit these patterns—the three only children on the base-stealing list, the firstborns who rebel, and the latterborn who conform? I’ll use birth order as a launching pad for examining the impact of siblings, parents, and role models on our tendencies to take risks. To see why siblings aren’t as alike as we expect them to be, I’ll look at the upbringing of Jackie Robinson and the families of the most original comedians in America. You’ll find out what determines whether children rebel in a constructive or destructive direction, why it’s a mistake to tell children not to cheat, how we praise them ineffectively and read them the wrong books, and what we can learn from the parents of individuals who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

Studies of Japanese Zen rarely include consideration of any aspects of Zen practice that fail to conform to the criteria of otherworldly meditation and enlightenment. The other activities of Zen monks typically are dismissed as vulgar popularizations. More attention is paid to ideal constructs than to what Zen monks actually did (and do). Yet to ignore the so-called non-Zen practices within Japanese Zen is to overlook a vital component of both Zen history and Japanese religion. Many so-called popular rites do not represent random syncretism but are performed in a distinctly Zen manner, the exegesis of which promises to reveal much about how Zen functions as a viable Japanese religion.

Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.

Trans and gender non-conforming people have stood by lesbians throughout the gay rights movement. We now need to support them as they fight for their equality.

The act of rebellion is seeded in doubt that SAFER-U is what it claims to be, and the search for some satisfaction outside of us. We can see what life without SAFER-U, lived in rebellion and fear, does to areas where people have not let SAFER-U gain control. The rebellious and non-conforming choose their poverty by rejecting the safety and riches of our U-City’s.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

you were part of a group, a collective – the Ummah – and any non-conformity, any attempt to break away from the collective were seen as turning your back on the group. I witnessed this frequently.

K.R. Malkani,63 the dedicated editor of the Organiser (who would go on to achieve the dubious honour of becoming the first man to be arrested during the Emergency), however, was not to be cowed. In the very next issue, he defiantly wrote: To threaten the liberty of the press for the sole offence of non-conformity to official view in each and every matter, may be a handy tool for tyrants but (is) only a crippling curtailment of civil liberties in a free democracy . . . A government can always learn more from bona fide criticism of independent thinking citizens than the fulsome flattery of charlatans.64

Inquiry is the Genesis of creation.

sometimes go days at a time with very few interactions. Sometimes these days can be lonely, but I don’t think loneliness is always a bad thing if it allows us to slow down and reflect on the world around us.

I sometimes go days at a time with very few interactions. Sometimes these days can be lonely, but I don’t think loneliness is always a bad thing if it allows us to slow down and reflect on the world around us.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t find my home in the depths. That I didn’t crave connection below the pretty surface of things. I've wished to be like all of “them”—the ones who live neat and tidy lives, not always asking questions or seeking more. Able to ignore the dull ache that speaks to places inside me that long to be seen. Performing a predecided role for external approval. Practiced at tucking away parts that don’t fit the prescribed notions for how one should be or act or feel or want or love or fuck or live. But that will never be me.

One modern view of this situation is that Harold’s freedom was being crushed by the absurd strictures of civilization. The innocence and creativity of childhood was being impinged and bound by the conformities of an overwrought society. Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. But looking at her son, Julia didn’t really get the sense that the unsupervised Harold, the non-homework Harold, the uncontrolled Harold was really free. This Harold, which some philosophers celebrate as the epitome of innocence and delight, was really a prisoner of his impulses. Freedom without structure is its own slavery.

Instead, theories of gender freedom, self-determination, and fluidity allow transgender people to express their gender non-conforming identities freely and fully.10

Do we trust the idea of love, no matter how mad – from Don Quixote’s love for the farm girl he renames Dulcinea del Toboso to Yossarian’s love for the chaplain – because in the face of conformity, the madder the love, in some mysterious way the greater the commitment to freedom?

While society perpetuates the norm that sex determines gender, transgender individuals turn this theory on its head. Transsexual people seeking sex reassignment surgeries are actually basing their sex on their gender identity. Gender serves as a signifier of sex and sexual orientation. Thus, when someone discriminates against a woman, it is rarely because she has a vagina or XX chromosomes—these are not readily apparent. The discrimination occurs because of the woman's public gender or gender performance. Sex discrimination is often truly a reaction to gender transgressions or gender non-conformity as defined by U.S. society.

I am a free-willed, free-thinking, non-conforming subversive using the powers of intellect and common sense to not only question my environment but search for answers to those questions in order to share that knowledge with those around me for a better tomorrow.

People who are dependent live accordingly to the lives and needs of others, and are emotionally blocked from journeying down the road of self-actualisation, non-conformity and independence

I mistook non-conformity for freedom and in so doing found myself anything but free. For it is in conformity to one's true nature that one is most becoming, in both senses of the word: well-fitted and beautiful.

Child prodigies usually pursue conforming achievement, following the well-worn paths to Carnegie Hall, the science Olympics, and chess championships. They succeed by expertly following the rules rather than making their own. The

To be an original human, you must die to all labels. This death brings the real vitality in life. Now one may ask, how can one achieve it? And there is the problem of the so-called modern humans. They all want somebody to tell them, how to achieve something. Here is a fact, calculus can be taught, quantum physics can be taught, molecular biology can be taught, but not freedom of mind. And why do you need a path in the first place? If there is a bottle labeled poison, on the shelf, you don't just bring it down and drink the poison to know whether it will kill you. Likewise, once you really see the poisonous implications of the socio-culturally passed on labels, you simply tear them apart - throw them away as far as possible. Does one need to deceive oneself, to understand self-deception! If not, then why do you deceive yourself, by conforming to the social labels, be it a religious label, a non-religious label, a nationalist label, an intellectual label, or a gender label. You are a human - that's it.

Science Fiction is a group of symptoms and not a disease,” so a medical student (failed) told me once. “It's like the old disease hydropsy that doctors treated for so long before discovering that it was only a collection of symptoms, sometimes for a heart disease, sometimes for a liver or kidney disease, or sometimes even for a septic throat.” Well, the symptoms for Science Fiction are a prowling avidity to search out and read certain occult texts; an uneasiness or excitement that permates the whole routine of life; it's the ‘itchy ears’, as mentioned in Scripture, seeking for ‘new things’. The symptoms are usually a falcon-like hunting or questing; a series of sudden tuneful encounters; a group of euphorias and buoyancies that cry in opposite directions to be hoarded like misers' treasures and simultaneously to be shared with fellow sufferers of the symptoms; feeling that the ‘World We Live In’ is somehow masked and needs to be unmasked. These and other symptoms indicate either a strange disease or diseases, or they indicate a perpetually new kind of health. Tracing the symptoms back to the ‘disease’ does indicate that the disease is multiple, that it has such names as Hard Science Fiction, Soft Science Fiction, High Fantasy, Low Fantasy, Non-Conforming Adventure Fiction. And sometimes it bears such non-consensus names as Biological Fiction, Ontological Fiction, Eschatological Fiction (did Teilhard, for instance, know that he was writing Eschatological Fiction?), Theological Fiction, or Psychological or Philosophical or Technological or Geological or Historical Fiction. These things and many others share the same complex of symptoms.

Quels sont les premiers pas susceptibles d'engager cette conformation interculturelle d'une humanité une et multiple ? Un premier registre, minimal, est celui du respect mutuel entre des manières d'être et de penser distinctes, entre des cultures et des constellations épistémiques différentes. Cette coexistence respectueuse implique la proportionnalité, c'est-à-dire la reconnaissance par chaque collectif de ses limites, de son propre espace et de celui qui correspond à d'autres collectifs. Telle est la base de toute rencontre et de toute coopération entre les multiples collectifs qui composent la mosaïque planétaire. Encore peut-on souhaiter aller au-delà de la simple acceptation respectueuse de l'autre, pour passer à une reconnaissance de la valeur de l'autre. S'ouvre alors la possibilité d'un dialogue, dans lequel aucun collectif n'aurait de raison de s'engager s'il ne percevait dans le monde de l'autre une chance et une occasion pour transformer son propre monde et l'enrichir, ne serait-ce qu'en le faisant exister en regard d'autres possibles humains et non humains. Un tel dialogue présuppose que l'altérité de l'autre ne demeure pas absolue, totalement impénétrable. La capacité d'écoute, prédisposition à faire place, en soi, à l'altérité de l'autre, s'avère ici éminemment précieuse, sans qu'on puisse garantir qu'elle suffise à déjouer les embûches et les malentendus qui parsèment nécessairement un tel cheminement. Il y faut aussi un effort patient de compréhension - comme saisie de ce qui était jusque-là insaisissable et incorporation de ce qui était étranger - afin d'élaborer des plages de traductibilité entre univers culturels distincts. Mais encore convient-il d'assumer la conscience d'une incomplétude, car c'est dans la reconnaissance de l'inachèvement de soi comme de la perfectibilité du collectif auquel on appartient que l'ouverture à l'altérité peut avoir quelque chance de s'opérer. C'est depuis l'autre en soi, depuis le non-soi de soi, que s'amorce la rencontre avec l'altérité de l'autre. (p. 138-139)

En définitive, le sort n’était pas si rancunier et si stupidement farceur, comme tant d’autres l’en accusaient. Negrişor avait remarqué, au fil de ses années, bien assez nombreuses pour que la somme finale soit jugée rondelette, que, si ce vieillard déluré, ce birbe à qui l’on a confié la charge de la maîtrise du temps et des trajectoires des hommes, lui infligeait un malheur ou deux, il prenait néanmoins ensuite le soin de retourner soudain la veste de la chance. Le barbon doit être plutôt égrillard et grippe-sou : face à celui qui ne se révolte jamais contre ses canulars, il est capable de sortir de ses gonds en redoublant de ténacité ; tandis que celui qui se ramollit, il finit par lui taper sur la tête et l’achever. En revanche, contre celui qui lui oppose résistance et l’accuse ouvertement, il se fâche, pour avoir été trop hostilement morigéné. Lorsqu’on fait des gaudrioles sympathiques, cela l’enchante comme tout grison qui ne met pas votre patience à rude épreuve. Que voulez-vous ? Nous vivons dans un monde qui s’est trop éloigné de ses origines, comme si nous étions les enfants d’hommes trop anciens et usés. Tout est fêlé dans cet univers expulsé de l’ordre préétabli ; possible que ce soit la raison pour laquelle Dieu souhaite sa perte, et sa transfiguration. Mais là commence une tout autre histoire, et seul le diable sait qui pourra encore la suivre. Celui qui, en revanche, sent la raison d’être des choses se doit, qu’il le veuille ou non, de s’y conformer. Puisque l’univers est timbré, que peut-il de plus, Negrişor, hormis commander encore un espresso, et disposer, de façon symétrique, autour de la tasse, sur la soucoupe, quelques mégots de cigarettes, en attendant la nouvelle facétie du vieillard aux ciseaux ?

Cette capacité d’objectivité et d’absoluité est la réfutation anticipée et existentielle des idéologies du doute : si l’homme peut douter, c’est qu’il y a la certitude ; et la notion même d’illusion prouve que l’homme a accès à la réalité. Dès lors, il y a nécessairement des hommes qui connaissent la réalité et qui de ce fait ont la certitude ; et les grands porte-parole de cette connaissance et de cette certitude sont forcément les meilleurs des hommes. Mais si la vérité était du côté du doute, alors l’individu qui douterait serait supérieur non seulement à ces porte-parole, qui n’ont pas douté, mais aussi à la majorité des hommes normaux à travers les millénaires de l’existence humaine. Si le doute était conforme au réel, l’intelligence humaine serait dépourvue de raison suffisante, et l’homme serait moins qu’un animal, car l’intelligence animale ne doute pas du réel auquel elle est proportionnée.

Our past may be somewhat responsible for defining who we are at present, but it does not need to define our future.

Un système de capitalisme d'État prit définitivement corps en Russie, non en déviant par rapport aux principes établis par Lénine -dans l'État et la Révolution par exemple- mais en s'y conformant.

A platform is “open” to the extent that (1) no restrictions are placed on participation in its development, commercialization, or use; or (2) any restrictions—for example, requirements to conform with technical standards or pay licensing fees—are reasonable and non-discriminatory, that is, they are applied uniformly to all potential platform participants.2

Misconduct, or non-conforming behaviour, as it is sometimes called, can be tackled in many ways such as counseling, warning, etc. In extreme cases such as, criminal breach of trust, theft, fraud, etc. the employer is also at liberty to initiate action against the employee, if the misconduct of the latter falls within the purview of the penal provisions of the law of the land. However such proceedings generally conducted by the State agencies, are time consuming and call for a high degree of proof. In addition to the above option, the employer also has an option to deal with the erring employee within the terms of employment. In such an eventuality, the employee may be awarded any penalty which may vary from the communication of displeasure, to the severance of the employer-employee relationship i.e. dismissal from service. Disciplinary authorities play a vital role in this context. Efficiency of the disciplinary authorities is an essential pre-requisite for the effective functioning of the reward and punishment function, more specifically the latter half of it.3. There was a time when the employer was virtually free to hire and fire the employees. Over a period of time, this common law notion has gone. Today an employer can inflict punishment on an employee only after following some statutory provisions depending upon the nature of the organisation.Briefly, the various statutory provisions which govern the actions of different types of organisation are as under: (a) Government: Part XIV of the Constitution relates to the terms of employment in respect of persons appointed in connection with the affairs of the State. Any action against the employees of the Union Government and the State Governments should conform to these Constitutional provisions, which confer certain protections on the 1

But the vocabulary has changed. Because new federal regulations have created something called a qualified mortgage, or Q.M., which must conform to strict requirements, future lending is likely to be categorized as Q.M. or non-Q.M. rather than prime or subprime. Non-Q.M. lenders will have both more flexibility and more liability, but not all non-Q.M. loans will be subprime.

The Austrian theory rests fundamentally upon the non-reversibility of the investment operation. Once "free capital" has been converted into buildings and machinery, any failure of events to conform to expectations will upset everything.

La mentalité contemporaine cherche en effet à tout réduire à des catégories temporelles : une oeuvre d’art, une pensée, une vérité n’ont de valeur, non en elles-mêmes et en dehors de toute classification historique, mais uniquement par le temps dans lequel on les situe à tort ou à raison ; tout est considéré comme l’expression d’un « temps », non d’une valeur intemporelle et intrinsèque, ce qui est tout à fait conforme au relativisme moderne, à ce psychologisme ou biologisme destructeur des valeurs essentielles. Cette philosophie tire le maximum d’originalité de ce qui, pratiquement, n’est pas autre chose que la haine de Dieu ; mais comme il est impossible d’injurier directement un Dieu auquel on ne croit pas, on l’injurie indirectement à travers les lois naturelles et on va jusqu’à dénigrer la forme même de l’homme et son intelligence, celle avec laquelle on pense et on injurie. On n’échappe cependant pas à la Vérité immanente : « Plus il blasphème - dit Maître Eckhart - et plus il loue Dieu ».

Their common denominator of humanism could not be reconciled with the Biblical view of man's depravity after the Fall and his need of salvation. Too late, many ministers began to see that hippie non-conformity with, and rejection of, the world was hardly the same as that high spiritual quest advocated by the Apostle Paul.

Il ne faudrait tout de même pas que les musulmans soient insidieusement invités à comprendre que la seule alternative au terrorisme serait de se conformer aux normes antitraditionnelles prônées par l’Occident. Lorsque, sous la menace, les Occidentaux exigent de musulmans qu’ils "reconnaissent l’État d’ Israël et renoncent à la violence", ils formulent une exigence qu’aucun croyant ne peut accepter. Il est faux d’affirmer que ceux qui opèrent cet amalgame ne sont pas hostiles à l’islâm : ils le sont, et il ne leur appartient pas, alors qu’ ils ignorent la religion islamique de manière systématique, de décider ce qui est conforme ou non à la shari‘a, à la loi traditionnelle propre à l’ islâm. Le devoir de tout musulman, et même de tout croyant, est de ne pas reconnaître la profanation inhérente à l’existence de l’État sioniste. Si on lui enjoint de reconnaître ce faux "Israël", en menaçant de l ’affamer s’ il refuse, c’est pour la défense de sa foi qu’ il devient un martyr, au moins en ce sens qu’ il accepte une souffrance pouvant éventuellement le conduire à la mort. On invite les musulmans à renoncer à la violence, tout en utilisant l’ intimidation pour les amener à agir contre leur volonté, c’est-à-dire en leur faisant violence. C’est dans le terme "violence" que réside l’ambiguïté. Il a été ordonné au Prophète Muhammad de "combattre les hommes jusqu’à ce qu’ ils disent : lâ ilâha illa Allâh (il n’y a pas de Divinité si ce n’ est Allâh)". Cet ordre divin concerne évidemment la communauté islamique et justifie le jihâd, la guerre sainte menée pour défendre le Droit d’Allâh et les droits de l’islâm. D’autre part, le Très-Haut a enjoint aux musulmans d’être "des témoins à l’encontre des hommes", c’est-à-dire à l’égard de ceux qui, sans avoir rejoint l’islâm, se réclament d’une révélation divine et d’une norme traditionnelle. C’est en vertu de cette injonction que les musulmans peuvent aujourd'hui interpeller l’Église catholique pour lui rappeler qu’ elle avait le devoir de ne pas reconnaître l’État juif et qu’elle s’est rendue coupable d’une faute, aux conséquences néfastes pour elle, en manquant à ce devoir. Nul ne peut reprocher à l’ islâm de combattre cet État et de mener une guerre sainte contre les égarements de l’Occident moderne. La seule question qui peut se poser est celle des moyens utilisés pour mener ce combat, étant bien entendu que le terrorisme est antitraditionnel par définition et que toute violence implique une brutalité contraire aux "bonnes manières d’agir" (makârim al-akhlâq) qui doivent prévaloir, même dans la manière de combattre et de faire la guerre. Cette question est alors de savoir s’ il est encore possible de mener une guerre vraiment sainte (jihâd) à notre époque où la force est exercée le plus souvent au moyen de la brutalité, de la violence et du terrorisme. L’immense hypocrisie de ceux qui accusent l’islâm d’être terroriste, c’est d’inverser les rapports et de les accuser en fait ... de se comporter comme des Occidentaux, ce qui est bien le comble de la contradiction !

L’état humain — ou tout autre état « central » analogue — est comme entouré d’un cercle de feu : il n’y a là qu’un choix, ou bien échapper au « courant des formes » par le haut, en direction de Dieu, ou bien sortir de l’humanité par le bas, à travers le feu, lequel est comme la sanction de la trahison de ceux qui n’ont pas réalisé le sens divin de la condition humaine; si « la condition humaine est difficile à atteindre», comme l’estiment les Asiates « transmigrationnistes », elle est également difficile à quitter, pour la même raison de position centrale et de majesté théomorphe. Les hommes vont au feu parce qu’ils sont des dieux, et ils en sortent parce qu’ils ne sont que des créatures; Dieu seul pourrait aller éternellement en enfer s’il pouvait pécher. Ou encore : l’état humain est tout près du Soleil divin, s’il est possible de parler ici de « proximité »; le feu est la rançon éventuelle — à rebours — de cette situation privilégiée; on peut mesurer celle-ci à l’intensité et à l’inextin-guibilité du feu. Il faut conclure de la gravité de l’enfer à la grandeur de l’homme, et non pas, inversement, de l’apparente innocence de l’homme à l’injustice supposée de l’enfer. [...] Bien des hommes de notre temps tiennent en somme le langage suivant : « Dieu existe ou il n ’existe pas ; s’il existe et s’il est ce qu’on dit, il reconnaîtra que nous sommes bons et que nous ne méritons aucun châtiment » ; c’est-a-dire qu’ils veulent bien croire à son existence s’il est conforme à ce qu’ils s’imaginent et s’il reconnaît la valeur qu’ils s’attribuent à eux-mêmes. C’est oublier, d’une part, que nous ne pouvons connaître les mesures avec lesquelles l’Absolu nous juge, et d’autre part, que le « feu » d’outre-tombe n’est rien d ’autre, en définitive, que notre propre intellect qui s’actualise à l'encontre de notre fausseté, ou en d’autres termes, qu’il est la vérité immanente qui éclate au grand jour. A la mort, l’homme est confronté avec l’espace inouï d’une réalité, non plus fragmentaire, mais totale, puis avec la norme de ce qu’il a prétendu être, puisque cette norme fait partie du Réel ; l’homme se condamne donc lui-même, ce sont — d’après le Koran — ses membres mêmes qui l’accusent ; ses violations, une fois le mensonge dépassé, le transforment en flammes ; la nature déséquilibrée et faussée, avec toute sa vaine assurance, est une tunique de Nessus. L’homme ne brûle pas que pour ses péchés; il brûle pour sa majesté d’image de Dieu. C’est le parti pris d’ériger la déchéance en norme et l’ignorance en gage d’impunité que le Koran stigmatise avec véhémence — on pourrait presque dire : par anticipation — en confrontant l’assurance de ses contradicteur avec les affres de la fin du monde (1). En résumé, tout le problème de la culpabilité se réduit au rapport de la cause à l’effet. Que l’homme soit loin d'être bon, l’histoire ancienne et récente le prouve surabondamment, l’homme n’a pas l’innocence de l’animal, il a conscience de son imperfection, puisqu’il en possède la notion ; donc il est responsable. Ce qu’on appelle en terminologie morale la faute de l’homme et le châtiment de Dieu, n’est rien d ’autre, en soi, que le heurt du déséquilibre humain avec l’Equilibre immanent ; cette notion est capitale.[...] (1) C'est la même un des thèmes les plus instamment répétés de ce livre sacré, qui marque parfois son caractère d'ultime message par une éloquence presque désespérée.

It’s very difficult to motivate yourself to do something. It’s much easier to leverage what you are already motivated to do. - Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity

« L’ouvrage de Rama P. Coomaraswamy, The Destruction of the Christian Tradition (...) est un exposé brillamment écrit et bien documenté sur ce qui s’est déroulé immédiatement avant, pendant et après le concile Vatican II. L’auteur s’intéresse avant tout à ce qui est orthodoxe et à ce qui est hérétique, et la manière tout à fait claire, directe et simple dont il traite son sujet est basée sur les décisions des précédents conciles et les déclarations des plus hautes autorités de l’Église à travers les siècles. Ce qu’il a écrit est suffisant et n’a pas besoin d’additifs. Mais, à partir d’un angle légèrement différent et en quelque sorte pour affronter les modernistes sur leur propre terrain, qui est celui de l’opportunisme psychique, nous voudrions néanmoins ajouter les remarques suivantes. Les responsables des changements en question ont fait valoir qu’une religion doit se conformer aux temps, à quoi on doit répondre : non, si se conformer veut dire cesser d’être soi-même et devenir complice des temps. La véritable conformité est différente : la médecine, par exemple, afin de se conformer à une époque, doit être capable de fournir des antidotes à tout ce qui se présente comme maladies. De même, il ne serait pas déraisonnable de maintenir qu’afin de se conformer à un âge caractérisé par de violents changements et des troubles désordonnés, la religion doit être plus préparée que jamais à manifester, et même à proclamer, son inébranlable stabilité sans laquelle, en tant que véhicule de la Vérité Éternelle, elle ne peut jamais être, en tout état de cause, fidèle à elle-même. Il ne fait guère de doute que l’âme humaine a profondément besoin dans son existence de quelque chose qui resterait toujours identique, et elle a le droit d’attendre de la religion qu’elle soit la constante infaillible qui satisfasse ce besoin. De telles considérations furent disséminées aux quatre vents par le concile Vatican II. Il n’est donc pas surprenant que celui-ci ait précipité une crise sans précédent. La gravité de la situation peut être mesurée, jusqu’à un certain point, par les chiffres suivants : de 1914 à 1963, il n’y eut que 810 prêtres qui demandèrent à l’Église Catholique la permission d’abandonner le sacerdoce, et parmi ces demandes 355 seulement furent acceptées. Depuis le concile, il y a eu plus de 32 000 défections au sein du clergé. Il faut considérer que ces chiffres se rapportent en partie à ceux qui sont coupables de la crise et en partie à ceux qui en sont les victimes ; en ce qui concerne ces dernières, qui sont des membres du clergé ou des laïques, il est significatif que non seulement l’usage de la liturgie traditionnelle a été découragé mais qu’il a même été expressément interdit. Cette stratégie aurait totalement échoué s’il n’y avait eu le fait que l’immense majorité des laïques — et ceci s’applique également dans une certaine mesure aux membres du clergé eux-mêmes — s’imaginent que l’obéissance due à la hiérarchie cléricale est absolue. L’un des grands mérites de l’ouvrage de Rama Coomaraswamy est de montrer à quel moment, selon la doctrine catholique strictement traditionnelle, l’obéissance devient un péché et à quel moment l’autorité, même celle d’un pape, devient nulle et non avenue. » [recension dans "Croyances anciennes et Superstitions modernes", Appendice II.]

You probably want what only a select few have. But if you do what most people do, if you follow the crowd, then you probably won’t have the life that you want. Non-conformity is important because you probably want to be like a select few, instead of ending up like most people.

Each one of us, as long as life stirs in him, may play a part in extricating himself from the power system by asserting his primacy as a person in quiet acts of mental or physical withdrawal-in gestures of non-conformity, in abstentions, restrictions, inhibitions, which will liberate him from the domination of the pentagon of power.

Si, è semplice invece! E se anche non ti sposassi più? Non puoi credere di essere persa se solo perdi una persona. Non puoi crederti persa se non ti sposi. In fondo chi stabilisce che sia una tappa fondamentale? Se una vita conforme alle regole della società non ti soddisfa, cambia.

Jesus is superior to any man, and he has regenerated our spirits and predestined us to conform to his image. The Holy Spirit is superior to any earthly thing, and his power clothes each believer with a heavenly quality that cannot be matched or mimicked by the non-Christian. The Christian is a superior kind of human because God is superior to any man or woman, and God indwells the Christian in all his fullness.

Hinduism perhaps is always better lived first, and then understood; like any path of wisdom and spirit. Hinduism is often described as a way of life rather than a religion, perhaps, for that reason. We do not begin with a theory or doctrine that we then try to bend the world to conform to. We are, one might say, ‘spiritual anarchists’. We are ever evolving, ever free. Our constraints on occasion have been responses to history and circumstances rather than our own effort to impose our will onto others; in our philosophy, we have no Others, no reviled category for non-believers. We can be atheists, and Hindu. We can be monotheists and polytheists. But in all our freedom, we do, still, have a sense of a center of gravity; and that is the sense of You, Alone, around which we have created all our philosophy, culture, art, science, and indeed civilization too.

When gender non-conforming people cross paths with sexually confused and repressed people, shit hits the fan.

An awaken and enlightened mind is several miles ahead of everybody, always accused of daydreaming, hallucinating, and being lost in fantasy. Remember, it is okay to be different, non-conformed, and unaligned; these are those who bring transformation to society.

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.

As I indicated initially, many institutions have been running 24/7 for decades now. It is only recently that the elaboration, the modeling of one's personal and social identity, has been reorganized to conform to the uninterrupted operation of markets, information networks, and other systems. A 24/7 environment has the semblance of a social world, but it is actually a non-social model of machinic performance and a suspension of living tha does not disclose the human cost required to sustain its effectiveness.

True innovation comes not from following the crowd, but from daring to think different and standing out loud.

Practicing meditation as escape has the dimensions of hypocrisy and deluding oneself. So meditation must be for the evolution and improvement of one's mind and for its purification. There can be no spiritual practice which is motivated by the desire to escape from complexity. Abandoning what we authentically know about ourselves in order to conform to the demands of our society drags both ourselves and our societies down to the level of something functional rather than something alive. Non-violent struggle is simply note newsworthy and places no pressure on politicians to act. It can safely be ignored because its response to being ignored will remain non-violent.

Whatever your dreams are, start taking them very, very seriously.

Before there was a Human Mind System, there was the Sovereign Integral. The HMS is the most opaque and distorted veil that has stood between humanity and its true self, perverting its self-expression within the domains we call reality. The Human Mind System is separated into three primary functional mechanisms: The unconscious or genetic mind, the subconscious, and the conscious. These three components intermingle to form what most people term consciousness. The unconscious, genetic mind is the repository of all humanity; the subconscious is the repository of the family bloodlines; and the conscious mind is the repository of the individual. However, and this is important to understand, the foundational patterns of thought are primarily from the subconscious and genetic mind structures of consciousness. Thus, while the individual believes themselves to be individual, unique, separate, and one-of-a-kind, in reality they are not. Not in the context of HMS. You can conceptualize yourself as a copy of the human family folded inside a copy of your parents and bloodlines, placed into an individualized expression: you. The “You” is an HMS particularized into one expression, but its roots are entirely planted in the soil of humanity and parental lineage, all of which is downloaded into the developing fetus before birth. This is precisely why, after ten thousand generations, we continue to operate in the same patterns of greed, separation, and self-destruction. The image in the mirror is upgraded with better “clothing” and more sophisticated masks, but underneath, the image remains the same feelings, the same thoughts, and the same behaviors. Social and cultural engineering via the entertainment and educational systems conspire to entrain the individual during their developmental years (3-14 years old), activating the programs and subsystems of the HMS to ensure that the individual is properly prepared to conform to the reality matrix of their time and place. Even those who are non-conformists, who fancy themselves “outside the box”, are well within the perimeter of the HMS.

La devotion silencieuse est un luxe, une pratique de croyants raffines; les masses hurlent leur foi grossiere non seulement on Orient, mais aussi en Occident. La foie des ames simples engendre partout les memes aberrations. Le tantrisme meprise l'homme routinier, se conformant sans les discuter aux us et coutumes du milieu social auquel il appartient et acceptant de meme les idees dont ceux-ci derivent. L'aventure est pour moi l'unique raison d'etre de la vie. Les idees des Orientaux concernant ce qui est decent et ce qui est indecent sont tres differentes des notres et rien de ce qui concerne le sexe ne leur parait propre a donner lieu a l'hilarite ou au scandale. Ce qui compte, ce sont les sentiments que le gourou ou le dieu fait naitre en nous. L'un comme l'autre remplissent le role d'excitateurs et mettent en action en nous des energies qui autrement demeureraient dormantes. Ainsi, il est recommande de ne pas eplucher la conduite de son gourou, de ne pas investiguer l'etendue de son erudition ou de son intelligence puisqu'en somme ce n'est pas absolument de lui que depend le benefice recherche par le disciple, mais que ce benefice est plutot le fruit des sentiments du disciple lui-meme. Les Orientaux ne sont jamais presses, ils vivent dans l'eternite. Les intimes de Gandhi supportaient joyeusement la charge passablement lourde, avouaient-ils parfois, de sa pauvrete couteuse. Aucun blame ne peut etre adresse a Gandhi pour avoir mene la vie classique du gourou indienavec tout ce qu'elle comporte d'ostentation quant a une "simplicite" factice: elle est presque imposee aux gourous par la force d'habitudes seculaires. L'esclavage spirituel ne deplait point aux Indiens, la majorite d'entre eux s'y soumettent meme avec joie. Gandhi, disait Nehru, pense continuellement en termes de salut personnel et de peche, il ne se preoccupe pas de reforme des institutions ou de la structure de la societe, mais seulement de bannir le peche de la vie des individus. Des intrus flanent a loisir dans les galeries des palais et sous les verandas des batiment ou rien ne les appelle: ils veulent simplement "regarder", ce qui est eminemment oriental. Quel que soit l'ideal qu'il cherisse, quel que soit le but qu'il poursuive, l'Indien, qu'il en soit conscient ou non, se sent toujours non point seulement le porte-parole d'un dieu, mais Dieu lui-meme possesseur de la Verite.

On the inside, we all just want to be loved and accepted. In sum, Kill Switch has a number of non-conforming sexual orientations and relationships that form a backdrop for the characters. Hopefully, you’ll appreciate my attempt to inform and destigmatize these behaviors. When social stigma and misconceptions are common, those with alternative sexual identities suffer. Many risk their jobs, child custody, medical care, and family relationships, in addition to experiencing many other forms of discrimination.

The current socio-political climate, exacerbated by the media's addiction to falsifying our existence, has meant that being trans/non-binary/gender non-conforming in the twenty-first century feels like constantly trying to prove your existence... When we have to venture into the world, where we aren't heard, or listened to, it can feel like we are shouting against the wind.

Could these groundbreaking and often unsung activists have imagined that only forty years later the 'official' gay rights agenda would be largely pro-police, pro-prisons, and pro-war - exactly the forces they worked so hard to resist? Just a few decades later, the most visible and well-funded arms of the 'LGBT movement' look much more like a corporate strategizing session than a grassroots social justice movement. There are countless examples of this dramatic shift in priorities. What emerged as a fight against racist, anti-poor, and anti-queer police violence now works hand in hand with local and federal law enforcement agencies - district attorneys are asked to speak at trans rallies, cops march in Gay Pride parades. The agendas of prosecutors - those who lock up our family, friends, and lovers - and many queer and trans organizations are becomingly increasingly similar, with sentence- and police-enhancing legislation at the top of the priority list. Hate crimes legislation is tacked on to multi-billion dollar 'defense' bills to support US military domination in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Despite the rhetoric of an 'LGBT community,' transgender and gender-non-conforming people are our 'lead' organizations - most recently in the 2007 gutting of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of gender identity protections. And as the rate of people (particularly poor queer and trans people of color) without steady jobs, housing, or healthcare continues to rise, and health and social services continue to be cut, those dubbed the leaders of the 'LGBT movement' insist that marriage rights are the way to redress the inequalities in our communities.

Happiness Habits I have a series of tricks I use to try and be happier in the moment. At first, they were silly and difficult and required a lot of attention, but now some of them have become second nature. By doing them religiously, I’ve managed to increase my happiness level quite a bit. The obvious one is meditation—insight meditation. Working toward a specific purpose on it, which is to try and understand how my mind works. [7] Just being very aware in every moment. If I catch myself judging somebody, I can stop myself and say, “What’s the positive interpretation of this?” I used to get annoyed about things. Now I always look for the positive side of it. It used to take a rational effort. It used to take a few seconds for me to come up with a positive. Now I can do it sub-second. [7] I try to get more sunlight on my skin. I look up and smile. [7] Every time you catch yourself desiring something, say, “Is it so important to me I’ll be unhappy unless this goes my way?” You’re going to find with the vast majority of things it’s just not true. [7] I think dropping caffeine made me happier. It makes me more of a stable person. [7] I think working out every day made me happier. If you have peace of body, it’s easier to have peace of mind. [7] The more you judge, the more you separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant, because you feel good about yourself, thinking you’re better than someone. Later, you’re going to feel lonely. Then, you see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. [77] Tell your friends you’re a happy person. Then, you’ll be forced to conform to it. You’ll have a consistency bias. You have to live up to it. Your friends will expect you to be a happy person. [5] Recover time and happiness by minimizing your use of these three smartphone apps: phone, calendar, and alarm clock. [11] The more secrets you have, the less happy you’re going to be. [11] Caught in a funk? Use meditation, music, and exercise to reset your mood. Then choose a new path to commit emotional energy for rest of day. [11] Hedonic adaptation is more powerful for man-made things (cars, houses, clothes, money) than for natural things (food, sex, exercise). [11] No exceptions—all screen activities linked to less happiness, all non-screen activities linked to more happiness. [11] A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? [11] It’s the news’ job to make you anxious and angry. But its underlying scientific, economic, education, and conflict trends are positive. Stay optimistic. [11] Politics, academia, and social status are all zero-sum games. Positive-sum games create positive people. [11] Increase serotonin in the brain without drugs: Sunlight, exercise, positive thinking, and tryptophan.