Poles Apart Quotes

Unending Love I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times... In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain, It's ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time. You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played along side millions of lovers, Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting, the distressful tears of farewell, Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man's days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours - And the songs of every poet past and forever.

The conservatives who say, "Let us not move so fast," and the extremists who say, "Let us go out and whip the world ," would tell you that they are as far apart as the poles. But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing; for they do not reach the people who have a crying need to be free.

Philosophically, Communism and Anarchism are poles apart. Practically—i.e. in the form of society aimed at—the difference is mainly one of emphasis, but it is quite irreconcilable. The Communist’s emphasis is always on centralism and efficiency, the Anarchist’s on liberty and equality.

Love is close to hate when it comes to sisters. You're as close as two humans can be. You came from the same womb. The same background. Even if you're poles apart, mentally. That's why it hurts so much when your sister is unkind. It's as though part of you is turning against yourself.

Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things. He grins. “Each new self standing on the last one’s shoulders until we’re these wobbly people poles?” I die of delight. “Yes, exactly! We’re all just wobbly people poles!

Now, as far as I was concerned, there are two ways of living, and because we're on a ball in space these were more or less exactly poles apart. The first, accept the world as it is. The world is concrete and considerable, with beauties and flaws both, and both immense, profound and perplexing, and if you can take it as it is and for what it is you'll all but guarantee an easier path, because it's a given that acceptance is one of the keys to any kind of contentment. The second, that acceptance is surrender, that there's a place for it, but that place is somewhere just before your last breath where you say "All right then, I have tried" and accept that you have lived and loved as best you could, have pushed against every wall, stood up after every disappointment, and until that last moment, you shouldn't accept anything, you should make things better.

Increasingly, life seems fractured, as if his past had been lived by someone else. It isn't just that the place he now resides in and the people around him are poles apart, it's like he himself is an entirely different person. The overriding obsessions and foibles of the man he'd once been now feel utterly ludicrous to the current resident of his mind and body. The only bridge is rage; when angered he can taste his old self. But in California, the way he is currently living his life, few things can vex him to that extent. But that's over there.

And it’s suddenly, blindingly obvious. He’s too gloriously good-looking. We are poles apart and from two very different worlds. I have a vision of myself as Icarus flying too close to the sun and crashing and burning as a result. ~Anastasia

Enlightenment and Orgasm are both personal affairs. Yet, both are treated poles apart by man

Well,' he said, 'I don't know. What's the use of my generalizing? I only know my own case. I like women, but I don't desire them. I like talking to them; but talking to them, though it makes me intimate in one direction, sets me poles apart from them as far as kissing is concerned. So there you are! But don't take me as a general example, probably I'm just a special case: one of the men who like women, but don't love women, and even hate them if they force me into a pretence of love, or an entangled appearance.

He Liked Pizzas, she Burger. He Liked Italian, she Continental. He Liked muffins, she puffs. Poles apart they had no chance, but cheese kept them together.

It was clear to me that both were intelligent, kind people, but careless with each other’s feelings, and poles apart in temperament. I liked both immensely; I hated their way together.

Can such a man, you ask, be a leader of the masses? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. The masses — by which I mean not the proletariat, but the anonymous collective body into which all of us, high and low, amalgamate at certain moments — react most strongly to someone who least resembles them. Normality coupled with talent may make a politician popular. But to provoke extremes of love and hate, to be worshipped like a god or loathed like the devil, is given only to a truly exceptional person who is poles apart from the masses, be it far above or far below them. If my experience of Germany has taught me anything, it is this: Rathenau and Hitler are the two men who excited the imagination of the German masses to the utmost; the one by his ineffable culture, the other by his ineffable vileness. Both, and this is decisive, came from inaccessible regions, from some sort of “beyond.” The one from a sphere of sublime spirituality where the cultures of three millennia and two continents hold a symposium; the other from a jungle far below the depths plumbed by the basest penny dreadfuls, from an underworld where demons rise from a brewed-up stench of petty-bourgeois back rooms, doss-houses, barrack latrines, and the hangman’s yard. From their different “beyonds” they both drew

When she had packed all the artifacts that made up their personal history into liquor store boxes, the house became strictly a feminine place. She stood with her hands on her hips, stoically accepting the absence of old Boston Celtics coasters and the tangle of fishing poles, the old dartboard from a Scots pub, the toolbox and downhill skis, the silky patterned ties which sat in the base of one box like a writing mass of snakes. Without these things, one tended to notice the bright eyelet curtains, the vase filled with yawning crocuses, a needlepoint pillow ... Overall, the house looked much like her apartment had eight years ago, before she had met him.

Everything about them is blighted, dead. Feelings flake off & fall in dust. The senses, vitrified, can no longer experience pleasure; they crack at the least provocation. Each of us, within, was as if devoured by conflagration, & our hearts were no more than a pinch of ashes. Our souls were laid waste. For a long time now we had believed in nothing, not even nothingness. The nihilists of 1880 were a sect of mystics, dreamers, the routineers of universal happiness. We, of course, were poles apart from these credulous fools & their vaporous theories. We were men of action, technicians, specialists, the pioneers of a modern generation dedicated to death, the preachers of world revolution, the precursors of universal destruction, realists, realists. And there is no reality. What then? Destroy to rebuild or destroy to destroy? Neither the one nor the other. Angels or devils? No. You must excuse my smile: we were automats, pure & simple. We ran on like an idling machine until we were exhausted, pointlessly pointlessly, like life, like death, like a dream. Not even adversity had any charm for us.

Now the poles have gotten so far apart that anyone who isn’t officiating a gay wedding at a Whole Foods is considered to be to the right of Rush Limbaugh.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other.

MD’s letter finally reached the village. But no one opened it. Winds glibly carried it away in casual chase and whispers of ghastly horror through the bamboo bush. The house of the Monsoon rain and the pretty pink knitting was now deserted; front yard had fallen decrepit as though struck with the dark fever of pestilence. Branches from storm lay randomly across the yard as did poles and the shack roof. Doors hung from their hinges, in the process of coming completely apart. Ravens came and sat fruitlessly in the yard in search of salted fish.

The managers and superintendents and clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham's for twenty years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing beds; he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town, and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.

In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so they told Sir Walter - rather than asked him - that he missed his wife. He replied that he did not. But this was not allowed to be possible; it was well known that newly married gentlemen were never happy apart from their wives; the briefest of absences could depress a new husband's spirits and interfere with his digestion.

The depths of winter longing are ice within my heart The shards of broken covenants lie sharp against my soul The wraiths of long-lost ecstasy still keep us two apart The amen winds of bitterness sill keen from turn to pole. The scares are twisted tendons, the stumps of struck-off limbs, The aching pit of hunger and throb of unset bone, My sanded burning eyeballs, as might within them dims, Add nothin to the torment of lying here alone... The shimmering flames of fever trace out your blessed face My broken eardrums echo yet your voice inside my head I do not fear the darkness that comes to me apace I only dread the loss of you thy comes when I am dead.

Being a feminist in principle is easy compared to being a feminist in practice. For men and women, living each day in practical defiance of thousands of years of gender-based streaming is so much harder than walking in marches, running workshops, and writing blog posts. It means questioning everything you do, moment by moment, day by day. It means thinking differently and making dozens of conscious decisions every day that you might have made on auto-pilot before. It's hard. It's taxing. It's tiring.

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be ‘high’, purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd. Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once. The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as ‘given’ things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spend itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’. Of course, I made up and even wrote lots of other things (especially for my children). Some escaped from the grasp of this branching acquisitive theme, being ultimately and radically unrelated: Leaf by Niggle and Farmer Giles, for instance, the only two that have been printed. The Hobbit, which has much more essential life in it, was quite independently conceived: I did not know as I began it that it belonged. But it proved to be the discovery of the completion of the whole, its mode of descent to earth, and merging into ‘history’. As the high Legends of the beginning are supposed to look at things through Elvish minds, so the middle tale of the Hobbit takes a virtually human point of view – and the last tale blends them.

I truly believed that a man should not be seen to be out front on feminism. That would be just like a man to try to take over the women's movement. We'd taken over everything else in history, in society, in the world, why not feminism, too? No, I don't think so.

We are not a bit alike, you know," she said, "our characters are poles apart. I show everything on my face, whether I like people or not, whether I am angry or pleased. There's no reserve about me. Maxim is entirely different. Very quiet, very reserved. You never know what's going on in that funny mind of his. I lose my temper on the slightest provocation, flare up, and then it's all over. Maxim loses his temper once or twice in a year, and when he does--my God--he *does* lose it. I don't suppose he ever will with you. I should think you are a placid little thing.

Earth processes that seem trivially slow in human time can accomplish stunning work in geologic time. Let the Colorado River erode its bed by 1/100th of an inch each year (about the thickness of one of your fingernails.) Multiply it by six million years, and you’ve carved the Grand Canyon. Take the creeping pace of which the continents move (about two inches per year on average, or roughly as fast as your fingernails grow). Stretch that over thirty million years, and a continent will travel nearly 1,000 miles. Stretch that over a few billions years, and continents will have time to wander from the tropics to the poles and back, crunching together to assemble super-continents, break apart into new configurations- and do all of that again several times over. Deep time, it could be said, is Nature’s way of giving the Earth room for its history. The recognition of deep time might be geology’s paramount contribution to human knowledge.

He had lived in an apartment with books touching the ceilings, and rugs thick enough to hide dice; then in a room and a half with dirt floors; on forest floors, under unconcerned stars; under the floorboards of a Christian who, half a world and three-quarters of a century away, would have a tree planted to commemorate his righteousness; in a hole for so many days his knees would never wholly unbend; among Gypsies and partisans and half-decent Poles; in transit, refugee, and displaced persons camps; on a boat with a bottle with a boat that an insomniac agnostic had miraculously constructed inside it; on the other side of an ocean he would never wholly cross; above half a dozen grocery stores he killed himself fixing up and selling for small profits; beside a woman who rechecked the locks until she broke them, and died of old age at forty-two without a syllable of praise in her throat but the cells of her murdered mother still dividing in her brain; and finally, for the last quarter century, in a snow-globe-quiet Silver Spring split-level: ten pounds of Roman Vishniac bleaching on the coffee table; Enemies, A Love Story demagnetizing in the world’s last functional VCR; egg salad becoming bird flu in a refrigerator mummified with photographs of gorgeous, genius, tumorless great-grandchildren.

The facade of the robatayaki looked like a leftover from the past…smoky-black tiles topped its wooden overhang…red, waxy paper lanterns lit it up…a noren curtain hung from a thin bamboo pole above the doorframe. Its sliding doors had rows of rectangular panes of glass. The robatayaki’s simplicity gave the impression of a one-story building, but eight floors of apartments rose up from it.

They had no relish for gossiping about their acquaintance and even politics seemed a little dull. In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so they told Sir Walter – rather than asked him – that he missed his wife. He replied that he did not. But this was not allowed to be possible; it was well known that newly married gentlemen were never happy apart from their wives; the briefest of absences could depress a new husband's spirits and interfere with his digestion. Sir Walter's guests asked each other if they thought he looked bilious and they agreed that he did. He denied it. Ah, he was putting a brave face on it, was he? Very good. But clearly it was a desperate case. They would have mercy on him and go and join the ladies.

Jews had been so numerous in Poland, and because the share of urban property owned by Jews had been high, this amounted to a dramatic transformation of the whole society. It was not that all Poles were poorer than all Jews before the war. Nor was it the case that Poles prospered during the occupation—the scale of destruction, even in the countryside, was something inconceivable in western Europe. What was telling for the future was the German politics of relative deprivation: taking something from everyone, but taking everything from the Jews, and then taking their lives. This created the gaps—the empty apartments and commercial and professional niches—that Poles filled with all the greater determination given their losses during the war and their uncertainty about what was coming next.

Suddenly life was good, even glamorous. We were poor but didn’t know it, or maybe we did know, but we didn’t care, because my mother had stopped disappearing into her bedroom. Our apartment building was surrounded by empty lots, which were all that separated us from the ocean. Within a couple of decades, those stretches of undeveloped land – prime coastline real estate –would be built upon, with upscale apartment complexes and million-dollar houses with ocean views. But in 1967, those barren lots were our magnificent private playground. I had a tomboy streak and recruited neighborhood boys onto an ad hoc softball team. Dieter and my mother installed a tetherball pole, which acted as a magnet for kids in the neighborhood. For the first time in years, we were enjoying what felt like a normal, quasi-suburban existence, with us at the center of everything–the popular kids with the endless playground.

And it would be startlingly cheap. IV estimates the “Save the Arctic” plan could be set up in just two years at a cost of roughly $20 million, with an annual operating cost of about $10 million. If cooling the poles alone proved insufficient, IV has drawn up a “Save the Planet” version, with five worldwide base stations instead of two, and three hoses at each site. This would put about three to five times the amount of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Even so, that would still represent less than 1 percent of current worldwide sulfur emissions. IV estimates this plan could be up and running in about three years, with a startup cost of $150 million and annual operating costs of $100 million. So Budyko’s Blanket could effectively reverse global warming at a total cost of $250 million. Compared with the $1.2 trillion that Nicholas Stern proposes spending each year to attack the problem, IV’s idea is, well, practically free. It would cost $50 million less to stop global warming than what Al Gore’s foundation is paying just to increase public awareness about global warming. And there lies the key to the question we asked at the beginning of this chapter: What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common? The answer is that Gore and Pinatubo both suggest a way to cool the planet, albeit with methods whose cost-effectiveness are a universe apart.

All these processes are helped along by another friend of the earth, dematerialization. Progress in technology allows us to do more with less. An aluminum soda can used to weight three ounces; today it weighs less than half an ounce. Mobile phones don't need miles of telephone poles and wires. The digital revolution, by replacing atoms with bits, is dematerializing the world in front of our eyes. The cubic yards of vinyl that used to be my music collection gave way to cubic inches of compact disks and then to the nothingness of MP3s. The river of newsprint flowing through my apartment has been stanched by an iPad. With a terabyte of storage on my laptop I no longer buy paper by the ten-ream box. And just think of all the plastic, metal, and paper that no longer go into the forty-odd consumer products that can be replaced by a single smartphone, including a telephone, answering machine, phone book, camera, camcorder, tape recorder, radio, alarm clock, calculator, dictionary, Rolodex, calendar, street maps, flashlight, fax, and compass--even a metronome, outdoor thermometer, and spirit level.

Why did I do it?" I finally asked him. "Because you couldn't stand it, because you were choking, that's why. Perfectly understandable." No, it was not understandable. Choking was just a word, a metaphor, a nothing. I myself had found the world crawling under my pillow that very same night. It was not an answer, not an explanation, yet it seemed the only one at hand, and the only word that said everything despite my mistrust of words. Why had I left her? Because I was living someone else's life, not mine. Because I wanted my life back, even if I didn't know what my life was or what I even wanted it to be. Because I wanted to be alone, or not with her, or with someone else, or, better yet, with no one at all. Because I wanted to find something of me in others only to realize that others were never going to be like me and ultimately had to be unclasped. thrown out, exploded, because estrangement is branded on the soul, because love itself was foreign to me, and in its place sat resentment and bile. Why had I even started with her? To be with someone instead of no one? To be like him? Or was I already, had always been like him, but in so different a guise that it was just as easy to think us poles apart? The Arab and the jew, the ill-tempered and the mild-mannered, the irascible and the forbearing, the this and the that! And yet, we came from the same mold, choked in the same way, and in the same way, lashed back, then ran away.

At the time of solitude, I went where Narmada was sleeping. She got awake and sat up. She neither got scared nor nervous but she immediately got off the bed. She kept both her hands tied on her chest. I was standing so close to her that my face was near her face. We could sense each other’s breath. I called out her name and could not speak anything else. After a moment, I started - “I love you Narmada…I like to be with you…I want to marry you.” She got nervous and said - “Please, go to your room, why have you come here? It may cause trouble if Jaanki sees us like this.” She was neck down. Her eyes were on the floor. Her heart was beating fast. “Don’t you want to talk to me? Why are you angry with me? Why don’t you trust on my feelings for you?” - I softly asked her. “I guess you don’t like my friendship with Varsha. You and Varsha are poles apart.” - I added. She said - “You please go. It would not be nice if someone sees us like this. I do not want anything from you.” I said - “But I am dying for you and I know you too are made for me.” Her eyes suddenly fell on maid behind the curtains of the door who was trying to listen to our conversation. Narmada said - “You please leave right now, we’ll talk later. Mom is not at home.” I went by on her prescriptive tone. She was fighting for her self-being and the reason was only Varsha. She felt suffocated with my friendship with Varsha. I was glad to hear her words - “WE’LL TALK LATER”. This meant, she gave her consent to my love. She understood my restlessness. -- Excerpts from Romantic Novel "Narmada

Now, an important word from our Minister of Defense: Certainly the loudspeaker in each and every apartment in North Korea provides news, announcements, and cultural programming, but it must be reminded that it was by Great Leader Kim Il Sung's decree in 1973 that an anti-raid warning system be installed across this nation, and a properly functioning early-warning network is of supreme importance. The Inuit people are a tribe of isolate savages that live near the North Pole. Their boots are called mukluk. Ask your neighbor later today, what is a mukluk? If he does not know, perhaps there is a malfunction with his loudspeaker, or perhaps it has for some reason become accidentally disconnected. By reporting this, you could be saving his life the next time the Americans sneak-attack our great nation.

The method he adopted in building the bridge was as follows. He took a pair of piles a foot and a half thick, slightly pointed at the lower ends and of a length adapted to the varying depth of the river, and fastened them together two feet apart. These he lowered into the river with appropriate tackle, placed them in position at right angles to the bank, and drove them home with pile-drivers, not vertically, as piles are generally fixed, but obliquely, inclined in the direction of the current. Opposite these, forty feet lower down the river, another pair of piles was planted, similarly fixed together, and inclined in the opposite direction to the current. The two pairs were then joined by a beam two feet wide, whose ends fitted exactly into the spaces between the two piles forming each pair. The upper pair was kept at the right distance from the lower pair by means of iron braces, one of which was used to fasten each pile to the end of the beam. The pairs of piles being thus held apart, and each pair individually strengthened by a diagonal tie between the two piles, the whole structure was so rigid, that, in accordance with the laws of physics, the greater the force of the current, the more tightly were the piles held in position. A series of these piles and transverse beams was carried right across the stream and connected by lengths of timber running in the direction of the bridge; on these were laid poles and bundles of sticks. In spite of the strength of the structure, additional piles were fixed obliquely to each pair of the original piles along the whole length of the downstream side of the bridge, holding them up like a buttress and opposing the force of the current. Others were fixed also a little above the bridge, so that if the natives tried to demolish it by floating down tree-trunks or beams, these buffers would break the force of the impact and preserve the bridge from injury.

Are you sure you’re all right?” Oscar asked. “I’m sure.” The sound of their voices disturbed the night, and her dishonesty disturbed her. How could she be all right? She’d been abducted at knifepoint. She’d heard the chanting again and seen the eerie black skeletal face on the bathwater’s surface. What were those things, if not part of the Umandu curse? “Are you sure he didn’t touch you?” Oscar asked, the softness of his question poles apart from the anger and irritation he’d shown all day. It was obvious he didn’t want to go chasing after Umandu, but she couldn’t imagine the prospect of bringing her father back to life would make him so sour. Camille sat up, holding the thin blanket around her neck. An odd thought struck her: They were on land, alone in a room, and they hadn’t yet struggled with an awkward stretch of silence. Camille liked the change and hoped it stuck. Oscar lay on the floor, beneath the double windows. He had one arm over his chest, the other behind his head. He saw her and pushed himself up, his own covers loose around his waist. He still wore his clothes, and she grinned, knowing it was for her benefit only. He’d be sweating rivers tonight in the heavy heat. Oscar wrapped his arm around one knee. “You have no idea what went through my mind tonight when I found that bathtub empty,” he whispered. “I can’t let anything happen to you, Camille.” She sat up a little straighter, hoping he wouldn’t pledge his protection just to honor his dead captain. “I didn’t mean to make you worry, Oscar. But my safety isn’t your burden.” Though she couldn’t see him clearly in the shadowed room, Camille felt his eyes on her. “You’re not a burden, Camille. Not to me.” She searched his dark outline. A patch of moonlight fell on a swath of bare skin on the curve of his neck. It glistened with sweat, and she felt her own skin fire with the charged silence growing between them. She didn’t know how to respond; he wouldn’t look away. “He didn’t touch me,” she whispered instead, answering his original question. She lay back and turned onto her side, disappointed she hadn’t found something more to say. Something to make the moment last a hair longer. Oscar’s covers rustled as he settled back as well. “That was smart of him,” he replied, and said no more.

My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.

First off, demon, let’s get one thing straight. I. Am. Not. Weak. What you saw last night was another fucking subclause of Lucifer’s that makes me of the same strength physically and magically as when I died, but only when on the mortal plane in the presence of the souls I damned. Any other time, I am not to be messed with.” “If you’re so bad ass, how come I never heard of you?” “I prefer to stay out of the spotlight, unlike some sorceress’s I know,” she said with a smile as she came to stop in front of him. “But I do have a nickname.” “Hot on a stick?” “No.” “Spanks with magic?” “Most definitely not.” “I know, you must be the famous BJ Swallows.” “I am going to hurt you.” “I was right?” “No. And your made up names are just pissing me off.” “Made up? I’ll have you know those monikers are just a few of the more famous witch ones I know. Of course, I don’t know if their magical abilities extend beyond the pole they dance on, but still, they’re very well known in my circles.” “Why am I not surprised?” “Are you going to tell what your name is then? ‘Cause I’m gonna wager it isn’t Magical Pie.” He really needed to learn how to keep certain thoughts to himself, an easy thing to promise with the iron grip she had on his balls. Not exactly how he pictured their first time touching. She twisted. He winced. “Let this be a reminder not to fuck with me. And just so you know, while my nickname is the Blood Witch, my true title is Satan’s Assistant.” She was the one who had all the damned souls trembling? Hot damn. “I have heard of you.” “Good, then you know what I can do. And might I add it hurts.” She leaned up on tiptoe as she said it, her lips so close to his. But Ysabel wasn’t the only one with surprises. And truly, she’d pushed the boundaries of temptation too far. He snapped her magic binding and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her flush against his chest. “Did I mention, apart from ability with fire, I can unravel several forms of magic?” Then he kissed her, and by all the coals in the furnace of Hell, he’d never burned hotter.

Only twice in literary history has there been a great period of tragedy, in the Athens of Pericles and in Elizabethan England. What these two periods had in common, two thousand years and more apart in time, that they expressed themselves in the same fashion, may give us some hint of the nature of tragedy, for far from being periods of darkness and defeat, each was a time when life was seen exalted, a time of thrilling and unfathomable possibilities. They held their heads high, those men who conquered at Marathon and Salamis, and those who fought Spain and saw the Great Armada sink. The world was a place of wonder; mankind was beauteous; life was lived on the crest of the wave. More than all, the poignant joy of heroism had stirred men’s hearts. Not stuff for tragedy, would you say? But on the crest of the wave one must feel either tragically or joyously; one cannot feel tamely. The temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is the sordid view. When humanity is seen as devoid of dignity and significance, trivial, mean, and sunk in dreary hopelessness, then the spirit of tragedy departs. “Sometime let gorgeous tragedy in sceptred pall come sweeping by.” At the opposite pole stands Gorki with The Lower Depths. Other poets may, the tragedian must, seek for the significance of life. An error strangely common is that this significance for tragic purposes depends, in some sort, upon outward circumstance, on pomp and feast and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry— Nothing of all that touches tragedy. The surface of life is comedy’s concern; tragedy is indifferent to it. We do not, to be sure, go to Main Street or to Zenith for tragedy, but the reason has nothing to do with their dull familiarity. There is no reason inherent in the house itself why Babbitt’s home in Zenith should not be the scene of a tragedy quite as well as the Castle of Elsinore. The only reason it is not is Babbitt himself. “That singular swing toward elevation” which Schopenhauer discerned in tragedy, does not take any of its impetus from outside things. The

Like some people, some things are like oil and frozen water.

p2 I'd seen a photo of the actual red and white checked notebook that was Anne [Frank]'s first diary. I longed to own a similar notebook. Stationery was pretty dire back in the late fifties and early sixties. There was no such thing as Paperchase. I walked round and round the stationery counter in Woolworths and spent most of my pocket money on notebooks, but they weren't strong on variety. You could have shiny red sixpenny notebooks, lined inside, with strange maths details about rods and poles and perches on the back. (I never found out what they were!) Then you could have shiny blue sixpenny notebooks. That was your lot. I was enchanted to read in Dodie Smith's novel I Capture The Castle that the heroine, Cassandra, was writing her diary in a similar sixpenny notebook. She eventually progressed to a shilling notebook. My Woolworths rarely stocked such expensive luxuries. Then, two thirds of the way through the book, Cassandra is given a two-guinea red leather manuscript book. I lusted after that fictional notebook for years. I told my mother, Biddy. She rolled her eyes. It could have cost two hundred guineas - both were way out of our league... My dad, Harry, was a civil servant. One of the few perks of his job was that he had an unlimited illegal supply of notepads watermarked SO - Stationery Office. I'd drawn on these pads for years, I'd scribbled stories, I'd written letters. They were serviceable but unexciting: thin cream paper unreliably bound with glue at the top. You couldn't write a journal with these notepads; it would fall apart in days... My spelling wasn't too hot. It still isn't. Thank goodness for the spellcheck on my computer!

The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources—out of his rejected self—but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength. Though his single-minded dedication is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life to demonstrate to himself and others that such indeed is his role. He sacrifices his life to prove his worth. It goes without saying that the fanatic is convinced that the cause he holds on to is monolithic and eternal—a rock of ages. Still, his sense of security is derived from his passionate attachment and not from the excellence of his cause. The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. Often, indeed, it is his need for passionate attachment which turns every cause he embraces into a holy cause. The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached. Though they seem to be at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other’s throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. They are as far apart and close together as Saul and Paul. And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.

Loretta was stuffing her belongings into her satchel when Hunter stepped into the lodge. He stood in the shadows a moment, watching her. The firelight fell across her, shimmering in her golden hair, flickering across the leather that skimmed her bent shoulders. She was sobbing. The sounds cut through him. “Blue Eyes?” His whisper snapped her head around. She sprang to her feet, his eyes huge with shock, her lips pale. “I’m leaving, Hunter.” Hunter stepped from the shadows, his heart catching at the way she retreated. “I was not at your wooden walls that day, Blue Eyes. I have spoken it.” He paused by the fire, not wanting to crowd her. “It is a God promise I make for you.” Sparkling with tears, her eyes met his. Her throat worked, and her mouth twisted. “Oh, Hunter, don’t you see it doesn’t make a difference?” She made a gesture toward his scalp pole. “From the first we knew it could never work between us. Somehow, for a few wonderful days, we lost sight of that. You’re a Comanche. I’m a tosi woman. We’re worlds apart.” “Look into me and say you have no love for me,” he commanded hoarsely. “All the love in the world can never change this.” “Say the words to me!” “I can’t. I do love you, don’t you see? What I must do has nothing to do with what’s between us.” “My heart sang only good things--” His voice caught, and he swallowed. “I thought the comb would bring you great gladness.” “I know that.” Loretta swiped at her cheeks and sniffed. “I’m not blaming you. It’s not your fault, Hunter, or mine, not even Red Buffalo’s. Don’t you see? This madness began long before we were born, and it’ll go on long after we’re all dead. Some things, no matter how sweet, how wonderful, just aren’t meant to be.

When the person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty. A well-known book is called Your God Is Too Small; it is a timely title. We are poles apart from our evangelical forefathers at this point, even when we confess our faith in their words.

when we create stereotypes, we typically do so according to two dimensions – warmth and competence – which in turn drive our emotional response to them.62 Warmth is essentially tied up with the question, ‘What are this group’s intentions?’ Competence answers the question, ‘Is that group able to carry out its intentions?

Liberals tended to be good at solving the problem when the ‘correct answer’ proved that gun control reduced crime. Conservatives were better when the answer proved the opposite. In short, people with high numeracy skills were unable to reason analytically when the correct answer collided with their political beliefs.

An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spend itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.

This is the secret of our strength and national vitality,” he went on. Significantly, DeBow spoke of Southerners as a “nationality.” Nations were ruined by a diversity of interests pulling them apart, he said, and in the case of the North by too much immigration from inferior north European peoples such as Poles, Russians, shanty Irish, and especially Germans, who instead of assimilating into the population and being elevated by it, rather remained apart in their own ethnic communities and thus dragged down the whole.21Somehow, he failed to grasp that by his own logic the African root stock of Southern slaves would be superior to the whites’ balmier Mediterranean origins.

Glory!' he continued, 'don't you see how the moon goes after the sun and cannot come to him? She is his proper mate and double, and the sun don't know, and won't have it, and so day and night, and winter and summer, and waxing and waning goes on and on. But that won't go on for ever. The sun will grow sad at heart, and wane for want of the moon some day, and then there will be a great flare and blaze and glory, and they will be in heaven. And now the two poles of the earth are apart, and so long as they keep apart, the world rolls on in misery and pain, and that is what makes earthquakes, and volcanoes, and great plagues—the poles are apart which ought to be together.

Unending Love I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain, Its ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time: You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell- Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man’s days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – And the songs of every poet past and forever.

No open drains in this Mumbai, no squalling, half-naked children, no cows or goats, no stray dogs. The same city, but two countries, poles apart.

Now, as far as I was concerned there are two ways of living, and because we’re on a ball in space these were more or less exactly poles apart. The first, accept the world as it is. The world is concrete and considerable, with beauties and flaws both, and both immense, profound and perplexing, and if you can take it as it is and for what it is you’ll all but guarantee an easier path, because it’s a given that acceptance is one of the keys to any kind of contentment. The second, that acceptance is surrender, that there’s a place for it but that place is somewhere just before your last breath where you say All right then, I have tried and accept that you have lived and loved as best you could, have pushed against every wall, stood up after every disappointment, and, until that last moment, you shouldn’t accept anything, you should make things better. This was more or less the philosophy of Tess Grogan, who, well into her nineties, kept the finest garden in Faha. We lost a garden, she’d say, speaking of the time of Adam like it wasn’t so long ago, pressing gently the swollen joints of her arthritic fingers and smiling the sagacious smile of the nonagenarian, ‘We lost a garden, our whole lives we have to remake it.

Now, as far as I was concerned there are two ways of living, and because we’re on a ball in space these were more or less exactly poles apart. The first, accept the world as it is. The world is concrete and considerable, with beauties and flaws both, and both immense, profound and perplexing, and if you can take it as it is and for what it is you’ll all but guarantee an easier path, because it’s a given that acceptance is one of the keys to any kind of contentment. The second, that acceptance is surrender, that there’s a place for it but that place is somewhere just before your last breath where you say All right then, I have tried and accept that you have lived and loved as best you could, have pushed against every wall, stood up after every disappointment, and, until that last moment, you shouldn’t accept anything, you should make things better.

Palestinian Ziad Rizk, 38, sits with others in a shelter made of a blanket stretched over four poles next to one of the destroyed Nada Towers, where he lost his apartment and clothes shop,

They were both poles apart One a ready masterpiece Another an unfinished art...

I will have your things returned to your apartment tomorrow.” It made me sick in my stomach to hear those words. His untimely declarations were worse than….It was that raw, that demeaning, and made you feel like you were nothing but a let down…a total let down. Well, I wasn’t willing to be a let down to anyone…least of all to someone willing to drop me in front of my home tossing my heart into the air…waiting for love to find me in all the wrong places. He wore a look of regret on his face. “Jason will drive your car home for you.” “Oh…okay, well...I had a great time.” It was over. I was a statistic, a hash line on the totem pole of his sexual career. “You and I, we were...it was fun. I had fun.” He leaned in toward me, kissing me gently, regretfully. Are you kidding me?

and I had spent a few days debating whether or not Michael was actually gay or just English. With the advent of metrosexuals and Europeans running around Manhattan, one never knows.

Never Let Me Down" (feat. Jay-Z, J-Ivy) [Intro:] Yeah Grandmama Told you I won't let you down Told you I won't let this rap game change me, right? [Chorus:] When it comes to being true, at least true to me One thing I found,one thing I found Oh no you'll neva let me down, Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) Get up I get(down) [Jay-Z:] Yo, yo first I snatched the street then I snatched the charts, First had they ear now I hav they're heart, Rappers came and went, I've been hear from the start, Seen them put it together Watch them take it apart, See the Rovers roll up wit ribbons I've seen them re-poed, re-sold and re-driven So when I reload, he holds #1 position When u hot I'm hot And when your feet cold, mines is sizzelin It's plain to see Nigga's can't f*** wit me Cuz ima be that nigga fo life This is not an image This is God given This is hard liven Mixed wit crystal sipping It's the most consistent Hov Give you the most hits you can fit inside a whole disc and Nigga I'm home on these charts, y'all niggaz visitin It's Hov tradition, Jeff Gordan of rap I'm back to claim pole position, holla at ya boy [Chorus] [Kanye West:] I get down for my grandfather who took my momma Made her sit that seat where white folks ain't wanna us to eat At the tender age of 6 she was arrested for the sit in With that in my blood I was born to be different Now niggas can't make it to ballots to choose leadership But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership That's why I hear new music And I just don't be feeling it Racism still alive they just be concealing it But I know they don't want me in the damn club They even made me show I.D to get inside of Sam's club I did dirt and went to church to get my hands scrubbed Swear I've been baptised at least 3 or 4 times But in the land where nigga's praise Yukons and getting paid It gon' take a lot more than coupons to get us saved Like it take a lot more than do-rags to get your waves Noting sadder than that day my girl father past away So I promised to Mr Rany I'm gonna marry your daughter And u know I gotta thank u for they way that she was brought up And I know that u were smiling when u see that car I bought her And u sent tears from heaven when u seen my car get balled up But I can't complaint what the accident did to my Left Eye Cuz look what a accident did to Left Eye First Aaliyah and now romeo must die I know a got angels watching me from the other side

One might call eighteenth-century Königsberg “multicultural,” at least in the sense that it was made up of many different peoples. Apart from a large contingent of Lithuanians and other inhabitants from the Baltic region, there were Mennonites who had come to Königsberg from Holland in the sixteenth century, as well as Huguenots who had found refuge in Königsberg. They continued to speak French among themselves, went to their own church, and had their own institutions and businesses. There were many Poles, some Russians, many people from other countries around the Baltic Sea; there was a significant Jewish community, and a number of Dutch and English merchants.

If people are told that their views are outdated, they may double down. Messages that seek to include rather than reprimand them will be more effective.

Because we can’t change reality when things we dislike or that cause us harm come to pass, we instead change our minds about them, persuading ourselves that they’re not really that bad.

opinions come first, and facts are interpreted to support them. This points to a wider truth touched on in Chapter 1, that many of our attitudes are rooted in predispositions established early in life and reinforced by the groups we interact with, and that, consequently, mere information is often insufficient to shift the dial.

Humans suffer from what is technically known as the illusion of explanatory depth (IOED).27 In other words, we tend to believe that we understand things far more precisely and coherently than we actually do.

In short, in uncertain times they craved the certainty of the ingroup, shunned the outgroup and, as they did so, locked themselves into a polarised mindset.

Why, then, should a story as absurd as Pizzagate prove so ‘sticky’? Quite simply, it ticked all the conspiracy theory boxes, and in so doing ticked many of the boxes for a great story. It evoked strong emotion through a narrative of supposedly suffering children. It posited a world clearly divided between good and evil. And in triggering fear in an environment dominated by social and political uncertainty it played on people’s natural tendency to pay more attention to negative coverage in the media when faced with news that induces anxiety, whether a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, a financial crash – or an evil conspiracy.

The fact is that better decisions get made when a range of different perspectives are heard. More mistakes are avoided. New furrows are ploughed.

When disagreement comes from a socially different person, we are prompted to work harder. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.

enabling debate and division that boosts rather than undermines innovation, creativity and productivity – is critical, but so too is emphasising what holds us together.

The conclusion of the American political philosopher John Rawls was that we need clearly defined ways to debate with one another, while protecting our political institutions, if we are each to remain free. We must find a way to disagree that does not ultimately undermine us all.

Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said, ‘I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

it turned out that in one particular US training camp they had been taught that Koreans were ‘cruel and heartless’ and trained to hate them deeply. So when they were shown unexpected kindness and compassion36 by their Korean captors, which flew in the face of the barbarism they had been trained to expect, their prior beliefs crumbled.37 In fact, soldiers who had been trained in this particular US camp were far more likely to defect than POWs who had not been given any training on the North Koreans or had been given more neutral information.

The point is, though, that he did all this kindly, not critically or censoriously. Famke acknowledged that ‘she just needed that’: it was his kindness, it seems, that made the difference

Kindness involves a mindset of understanding, not winning. A zero-sum, winner-takes-all mentality makes both sides think that if the other side wins, they lose. An understanding mentality ensures that because neither side loses, neither side puts winning beyond everything else.

So instead, we started having conversations where we entered with the intention just to learn from the other side. And we found that in doing so, it made our own positions better, and our own views stronger, more reasoned and nuanced. Second, we realised that a lot of our assumptions about the other side turned out to be wrong.

rather than thinking about negotiation as a battle, you should think about negotiation as collaborative problem-solving.’46 She argues that it is critical that you start by being prepared – and able – to frame your proposals as a solution to a problem your counterpart has.

One final way to counter polarisation is to formulate a markedly different position from our usual one and come up with reasons for it. Can we understand why someone would hold such a view? It may be different from ours, but is it genuinely worse – or perhaps better

Debate is good. Disagreement is good. Entrenching in our own beliefs to the extent that we can’t tolerate either does us much harm.

On good nights, Winnie managed to glean five nonconsecutive hours of a shallow and unsatisfying slumber. But those nights were rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.

People will often express more strongly how they feel about another group than what they think of the issues that divide them. Indeed, it can be quite possible for them to dislike each other strongly while not disagreeing much on specific issues.

If you find yourself put at random in a group of green sock wearers, you will naturally favour other green sock wearers, whether or not you have ever previously expressed a view on socks.

Were participants aware of the influence their political group identity had on their judgements? No. All were convinced they had made rational assessments based purely on the evidence placed in front of them. They did, however, believe that others, including their allies but especially those of different ideological persuasians, would be swayed in such a way.

This worrying tendency to become convinced that the same set of ‘facts’ prove us to be right and our rivals to be wrong is a major driving force in polarisation.

because one of the great mistakes many political analysts historically made was to assume, as the political scientist Anthony Downs did in his 1957 article ‘An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy’, that ‘the citizens of our model democracy are rational’.

When people are worried or frightened, the wrong answer is better than no answer. Ignorant confidence is better received than informed uncertainty. Leaders who are trying to do the right thing can fall by the wayside. Leaders who say that they are doing the right thing are popular.

Strong leaders, suggests the Oxford historian and political scientist Archie Brown, are the least likely to reach across divides, seek consensus and deliver a transformative, depolarising reset.

Yet despite such voter engagement, analysis shows that voter advice apps have had no effect on their users’ ultimate voting decision.

A predisposition to reduce threat drives us to want to keep the world the way it is.

For humans who are hardwired to find ways to reduce uncertainty,58 living in a world that is increasingly uncertain is fraught with dangers.

If you find yourself put at random in a group of green sock wearers, you will naturally favour other green sock wearers, whether or not you have ever previously expressed a view on socks. In the process, you will come to regard yellow sock wearers less favourably.

a sufficient number of people believe that men make better leaders than women, they will behave towards men in ways that make it easier for them to lead, and to women in ways that hamper their chances of doing likewise. Men will therefore find it easier to excel in leadership positions, while women will have to work hard to overcome the false beliefs about their lack of leadership abilities.53 Expectations drive behaviour.

we often don’t treat individuals as individuals. We treat them as members of a group. And in so doing, we bring a freight of preconceptions and prejudices to our judgements.

If, for example, people in group A believe that members of group B are ‘stealing’ their jobs, they will feel resentment and hostility even if what they think to be true is not objectively the case.

Anything that causes people to fear losing what they already have offers the potential for conflict.

research has shown that when delegates from opposing groups are seated next to each other, they are actually more likely to vote with their own party.

it does generally seem to be the case that contact-based approaches can only have a limited effect when it comes to reducing polarisation, not least because the people who become involved are not drawn from society as a whole but from those who chose to ‘opt in’.

With a relevant and tangible ‘superordinate’ goal in play, the animosity previously expressed by the two groups quickly began to dissipate.28 The insults dwindled. Aggression vanished. Cross-group friendships began to form. Pursuing a common goal highlighted what the boys had in common and averted focus from what was different.

Manchester United fans were asked to talk not about their team but about what they liked about being a football supporter. When the fans primed in this way were then confronted by the fallen jogger, the help they offered was determined not by whether the jogger was a Manchester United supporter but by whether he was a football fan.

Having randomly assigned accurate and inaccurate information about immigration policy and levels of immigration to participants in their study, they found that the provision of accurate facts and figures did have an impact on people’s knowledge. But that new knowledge had no knock-on effect on attitudes, even among those who discovered that their previous assumptions were wildly out of kilter with reality.