Relying On Each Other Quotes

When love first happens, the individuals are giving each other energy unconsciously and both people feel buoyant and elated. That's the incredible high we call being ‘in love.’ Unfortunately, once they expect this feeling to come from another person, they cut themselves off from the energy in the universe and begin to rely even more on the energy from each other--only now there doesn’t seem to be enough and so they stop giving each other energy and fall back into their dramas in an attempt to control each other and force the other’s energy their way.

Males--they've all trained against each other. They expect attacks to certain zones on their bodies and from someone who's used to relying on upper-body strength. And they always, always underestimate women.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from ‘being in love’ — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. it is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

Without realizing it, we fill important places in each other’s lives. It’s that way with the guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the local garage, the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, coworkers. Good people who are always “there,” who can be relied upon in small, important ways. People who teach us, bless us, encourage us, support us, uplift us in the dailiness of life. We never tell them. I don’t know why, but we don’t. And, of course, we fill that role ourselves. There are those who depend in us, watch us, learn from us, take from us. And we never know. You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who.

That’s another thing,” she said. “You no longer need other people in your life once you have found your true love. No wonder Magnus feels he cannot open up to you, when you rely so heavily upon these other people. When love is true, you should meet each other people. When love is true, you should meet each other’s every desire, every need—A re you listening, young A lexander? For my advice is precious, and not given often…

The thing is, you cannot ask people to coexist by having one side bow their heads and rely on a solution that is only good for the other side. What you can do is stop blaming each other and engage in dialogue with one person at a time. Everyone knows that violence begets violence and breeds more hatred. We need to find our way together. I feel I cannot rely on the various spokespersons who claim they act on my behalf. Invariably they have some agenda that doesn't work for me. Instead, I talk to my patients, to my neighbors and colleagues--Jews, Arabs--and I find out they feel as I do: we are more similar than we are different, and we are all fed up with the violence.

Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect - We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

Mahler put the word schwer beside certain passages in his musical scores. Meaning “difficult.” “Heavy.” We were told this at some point by The Moth, as if it was a warning. He said we needed to prepare for such moments in order to deal with them efficiently, in case we suddenly had to take control of our wits. Those times exist for all of us, he kept saying. Just as no score relies on only one pitch or level of effort from musicians in the orchestra. Sometimes it relies on silence. It was a strange warning to be given, to accept that nothing was safe anymore. “ ‘Schwer,’ ” he’d say, with his fingers gesturing the inverted commas, and we’d mouth the word and then the translation, or simply nod in weary recognition. My sister and I got used to parroting the word back to each other—“schwer.

If you prioritize only your romantic relationships, who is going to hold your hand through a breakup? Relying on your spouse to be your everything will definitely undo your marriage. No one human can meet your every single emotional need. If you only prioritize your kids, what happens when they’re grown and living far away, wrapped up in their own lives? Or if you only prioritize work? Wow, that’s too sad to even contemplate.

No man is an island... when one hurts we all hurt, we are all interconnected with each other. No one is self sustaining, we all rely on each other. By sharing, our gains are magnified and out losses mitigated, our lives are easier.

As we destabilize the planetary systems we rely on for survival, the strain on our planet mirrors that in societies. These imbalances reinforce each other, amplifying the challenges.

Don't let yourself drown. Don't run or swim away from the safety of the boat. The boat, that's your home, your family, your life. The preserver that keeps you afloat will always be your wife, your partner. Without a preserver you drown, a preserver without something to hold onto has no purpose, so you see, you need each other...you need to rely on one another for everything. Never forget that if it's not worth fighting for, it's not worth having.

In us, there is a river of feelings, in which every drop of water is a different feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its existence. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears.

Please do not leave me, he thought. He could not bear a world without Alli. He realized how much he relied on her from morning until night. She was his only conversation. His only smile. She prepared their meager food and always offered it to him first, even though he insisted she eat before he did. THey leaned on each other at sunsets. Holding her as they slept felt like his last connection to humanity.

We can’t rely on anything. Except ourselves. Ludicrous responsibility devolves on us, overwhelms us. In every regard, right up the present, people always have relied on each other—or God.

Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation[…]whose presence in time, in discourse, in institutions (schools, libraries, foreign services) gives it strength and authority.

Looking back at those early days in the band house, we can all see how important they were in helping us bond as a band. It could have gone so wrong. Danny and I had picked Harry and Dougie after, literally, two days of knowing them. We could have all hated each other. We could have found that we had nothing in common, or that we resented the time we spent with each other. In fact, we had such a lot of fun. We weren’t yet famous or successful, but already we were having the time of our lives. Even when we hit the big time, we didn’t want to go out to clubs or celebrity haunts. Not our scene. For us, the best thing about being in a band was being in a band, doing band stuff - not all the trappings that went with it. We liked working on our music, and we liked hanging out together. All this meant we gelled more than most bands ever have the opportunity or inclination to do. Within a couple of months of moving into the band house, I had three new best friends. Their names were Danny, Harry and Dougie. No matter what the future held for us, our friendship was something we now know we could always rely on.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do.

You should always aim to be your own mouse, Lieam. In fact...you already are. You are not so quick to jump into danger as Saxon and not as pensive of mind as Kenzie. They rely on each other too much. Saxon knows he can afford to be reckless since Kenzie acts as his conscience. And Kenzie can linger in his thoughts and plans, because he knows Saxon can defend him. I tested Kenzie earlier. I wanted to see if he would be swayed by my advice. It took Saxon's coaxing to make up the greyfur's mind. Be compleete with in yourself young redfur...you will never disappoint. Even in solitude.

Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn't think of happiness as an illness. Sadness and happiness need each other. To exist, each relies on the other, is what I mean

We have to dive below to discover the basic problem: these couples have disconnected emotionally; they don’t feel emotionally safe with each other. What couples and therapists too often do not see is that most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection. Underneath all the distress, partners are asking each other: Can I count on you, depend on you? Are you there for me? Will you respond to me when I need, when I call? Do I matter to you? Am I valued and accepted by you? Do you need me, rely on me? The anger, the criticism, the demands, are really cries to their lovers, calls to stir their hearts, to draw their mates back in emotionally and reestablish a sense of safe connection.

There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.

Love is like being on a small boat in the middle of the sea with no compass and no one to rely on except each other.

A certain man who was learning archery faced the target with two arrows in his hand. But his instructor said, ' A beginner ought never to have a second arrow; for as long as he relies upon the other, he will be careless with his first one. At each shot he ought to think that he is bound to settle it with this particular shaft at any cost.' Doubtless he would not intentionally act foolishly before his instructor with one arrow, when he has but a couple. But, though he may not himself realize that he is being careless, his teacher knows it. You should bear this advice in mind on every occasion. (In the same way) he who follows the path of learning thinks confidently in the evening that the morning is coming, and in the morning that the evening is coming, and that he will then have plenty of time to study more carefully ; less likely still is he to recognize the waste of a single moment. How hard indeed is it to do a thing at once-now, the instant that you think of it !

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today`s shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift.

Hope for the future lies in each of us looking within. By learning to feed your hunger, you can overcome the tempting illusions all around you. By discovering who you are, you can stop basing your self-image solely on other people’s ideas about you. By connecting to your inner strength, you can stop cycling between idealistic illusions and self-hating disillusionment. By taking responsibility for yourself, you can stop relying on others to take responsibility for you.

But now I saw the emotional landscape quite differently—more like the pointillism of a Seurat painting: each color made up of many other colors. Look closely, and it’s dots. Stand back, and it’s an afternoon on the lake—all the colors relying on each other for texture and meaning.

But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.

Companionate love grows slowly over the years as lovers apply their attachment and caregiving systems to each other, and as they begin to rely upon, care for, and trust each other. If the metaphor for passionate love is fire, the metaphor for companionate love is vines growing, intertwining, and gradually binding two people together.

Friendship is a difficult thing to define. Oscar here is my oldest friend. How would you define friendship, Oscar?" Oscar grunts slightly, as though the answer is obvious. "Friendship is about choice and chemistry. It cannot be defined." "But surely there's something more to it than that." "It is a willingness to overlook faults and to accept them. I would let a friend hurt me without striking back," he says, smiling. "But only once." De Souza laughs. "Bravo, Oscar, I can always rely on you to distill an argument down to its purest form. What do you think, Dayel?" The Indian rocks his head from side to side, proud that he has been asked to speak next. "Friendship is different for each person and it changes throughout our lives. At age six it is about holding hands with your best friend. At sixteen it is about the adventure ahead. At sixty it is about reminiscing." He holds up a finger. "You cannot define it with any one word, although honesty is perhaps the closest word-" "No, not honesty," Farhad interrupts. "On the contrary, we often have to protect our friends from what we truly think. It is like an unspoken agreement. We ignore each other's faults and keep our confidences. Friendship isn't about being honest. The truth is too sharp a weapon to wield around someone we trust and respect. Friendship is about self-awareness. We see ourselves through the eyes of our friends. They are like a mirror that allows us to judge how we are traveling." De Souza clears his throat now. I wonder if he is aware of the awe that he inspires in others. I suspect he is too intelligent and too human to do otherwise. "Friendship cannot be defined," he says sternly. "The moment we begin to give reasons for being friends with someone we begin to undermine the magic of the relationship. Nobody wants to know that they are loved for their money or their generosity or their beauty or their wit. Choose one motive and it allows a person to say, 'is that the only reason?'" The others laugh. De Souza joins in with them. This is a performance. He continues: "Trying to explain why we form particular friendships is like trying to tell someone why we like a certain kind of music or a particular food. We just do.

Like the turtle's shell, the sense of self serves as a shield against stimulation and as a burden which limits mobility into possibly dangerous areas. The turtle rarely has to think about what's on the other side of his shell; whatever it is, it can't hurt him, can't even touch him. So, too, adults insist on the shell of a consistent self for themselves and their children and appreciate turtles for friends; they wish to be protected from being hurt or touched or confused or having to think. If a man can rely on consistency, he can afford not to notice people after the first few times. But I imagined a world in which each individual might be about to play the lover, the benefactor, the sponger, the attacker, the friend: and once known as one of the next day he might yet be anything. Would we pay attention to this person? Would life be boring? Would life be livable? I saw then clearly for the first time that the fear of failure keeps us huddled in the cave of self - a group of behavior patterns we have mastered and have no intention of risking failure by abandoning.

In search of relationship safety, our attachment system is primed to seek the answers to certain questions regarding our partners. Both consciously and unconsciously we are looking to know: If I turn towards you, will you be there for me? Will you receive and accept me instead of attack, criticize, dismiss or judge me? Will you comfort me? Will you respond in a way that calms my nervous system? Do I matter to you? Do I make a difference in your life? Can we lean into and rely on each other?

The opinion of each person matters. All opinions are subjective. We should stop relying on others' views and start believing in our own instinct whatever position in the society we have. All are equal.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head. I once even observed the etiquette of an ashram in India, though this was a trial to me.

I suppose there may be a branch president or a high councilor or an elders quorum president or a visiting teacher in the room who wants to know what it is we are to accomplish as Church members when we get together, even if it's only in a home evening group or an opportunity to pray together. Well, this passage indicates that it may have something to do with remembering each other. We all count. Everyone matters. We have a name and it's recorded and we need to remember that here. No one must get lost. "And their names were taken, that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God. . . to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ . . . to fast and to speak with one another concerning the welfare of their souls . . . to observe that there should be no iniquity among them"--what a great thought about meetings and what they are supposed to do, what a Sunday School class can be, what a scriptural discussion in an apartment can be.

Trees don't rely exclusively on dispersal in the air, for if they did, some neighbors would not get wind of the danger. Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver has discovered that they also warn each other using chemical signals sent through the fungal networks around their root tips, which operate no matter what the weather. Surprisingly, news bulletins are sent via the roots not only by means of chemical compounds but also by means of electrical impulses that travel at the speed of a third of an inch per second. In comparison with our bodies, it is, admittedly, extremely slow. However there are species in the animal kingdom, such as jellyfish and worms, whose nervous systems conduct impulses at similar speed. Once the latest news has been broadcast, all oaks int he area promptly pump tannins through their veins.

For each now strives to isolate his person as much as possible from the others, wishing to experience within himself life's completeness, yet from all his efforts there results not life's completeness but a complete suicide, for instead of discovering the true nature of their being they lapse into total solitariness. For in our era all are isolated into individuals, each retires solitary within his burrow, each withdraws from the other, conceals himself and that which he possesses, and ends by being rejected of men and by rejecting them. He ammasses wealth in solitariness, thinking: how strong I am now and how secure, yet he does not know, the witless one, that the more he ammasses, the further he will sink into suicidal impotence. For he has become accustomed to relying upon himself alone has isolated himself from the whole as an individual, has trained his soul not to trust in help from others, in human beings and mankind, and is fearful only of losing his money and privileges he has acquired. In every place today the human mind is mockingly starting to lose its awareness of the fact that a person's true security consists not in his own personal, solitary effort, but in the common integrity of human kind.

We are broken. Our ways are apart. Still we laugh together and taunt. We fight and get hurt... Still we don't stop! We spread love among us, With the scent of believe. We write on live. Our dreams are shattered. We think to move on, But scared to miss each other. We smirk when someone scolds, But we drink a jar of poison each time. We die and born everyday. We rely on each other. We get furious. We tease and never step back. We listen but never act on. For public we are mature, But among us we are childish. We act like ninjas among us. And we love to stay like this... Among us forever! Because we are siblings.

Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence. But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence. And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence. Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe? Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?

I once wrote a book about George Orwell, who might have been my hero if I had heroes, and was upset by his callousness about the burning of churches in Catalonia in 1936. Sophocles showed, well before the rise of monotheism, that Antigone spoke for humanity in her revulsion against desecration. I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head.

The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power.

Sarah smelled chocolate on Lucy's breath as she leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on the tip of her cute little nose. A vision came to her as her lips touched Lucy's skin, a sudden vivid awareness of the life they'd lead together from here on out, the hothouse intimacy of a single mother and her only child, the two of them sharing everything, breathing the same air, inflicting their moods on each other, best friends and bitter rivals, competing for attention, relying on each other for companionship and emotional support, forming the intense, convoluted, and probably unhealthy bond that for better and worse would become the center of both of their identities, fodder for years of therapy, if they could ever figure out a way to pay for it. It wasn't going to be an easy future, Sarah understood that, but it felt REAL to her -- so palpable and close at hand, so in keeping with what she knew of her own life -- that it almost seemed inevitable, the place they'd been heading all along. It was enough to make her wonder how she'd ever managed to believe in the alternate version, the one where the Prom King came and made everything better.

When we were in our mother’s womb, we felt secure—protected from heat, cold, and hunger. But the moment we were born and came into contact with the world’s suffering, we began to cry. Since then, we have yearned to return to the security of our mother’s womb. We long for permanence, but everything is changing. We desire an absolute, but even what we call our “self” is impermanent. We seek a place where we can feel safe and secure, a place we can rely on for a long time. When we touch the ground, we feel the stability of the earth and feel confident. When we observe the steadiness of the sunshine, the air, and the trees, we know that we can count on the sun to rise each day and the air and the trees to be there tomorrow. When we build a house, we build it on ground that is solid. Before putting our trust in others, we need to choose friends who are stable, on whom we can rely.

Man follows Earth, Earth follows Heaven. Heaven follows the Tao. Yet the Tao follows Nature. Tao produced one. One produced two. Two produced Three. Three produced ten thousand beings. Ten thousand beings carry yin and embrace yang; By blending their energies they achieve harmony. Therefore existence and nonexistence produce each other. Difficulty and ease complement each other. Long and short contrast with each other. High and low rely on each other. Sound and voice harmonize with each other. Front and back follow each other. The Tao fulfills its purpose quietly and makes no claim. When success is achieved, withdrawing. The highest good is like water. Water benefits ten thousand beings, Yet it does not contend. Nothing under Heaven is as soft and yielding as water. Yet in attacking the firm and strong, Nothing is better than water.

Depression is a serious illness. It’s physically painful, debilitating. And you can’t just decide to get over it in the same way you can’t just decide to get over cancer. Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn’t think of happiness as an illness. Sadness and happiness need each other. To exist, each relies on the other.

I started crying when the group [therapy] was over because the last thing we did upset me - we all held a piece of the same cloth, leaned back and supported each other's weight. I couldn't do it. I bent my legs and elbows and stood very firm, yet . . . I needed to feel supported, as i do in life, but i can't let myself be, and i pretend not to need that support.

Another myth that is firmly upheld is that disabled people are dependent and non-disabled people are independent. No one is actually independent. This is a myth perpetuated by disablism and driven by capitalism - we are all actually interdependent. Chances are, disabled or not, you don’t grow all of your food. Chances are, you didn’t build the car, bike, wheelchair, subway, shoes, or bus that transports you. Chances are you didn’t construct your home. Chances are you didn’t sew your clothing (or make the fabric and thread used to sew it). The difference between the needs that many disabled people have and the needs of people who are not labelled as disabled is that non-disabled people have had their dependencies normalized. The world has been built to accommodate certain needs and call the people who need those things independent, while other needs are considered exceptional. Each of us relies on others every day. We all rely on one another for support, resources, and to meet our needs. We are all interdependent. This interdependence is not weakness; rather, it is a part of our humanity.

Males—they’ve all trained against each other. They expect attacks to certain zones on their bodies and from someone who’s used to relying on upper-body strength. And they always, always underestimate women.

It worked because on a social level, apparently enough people wanted it to, and because at the heart of it, billions of humans living in fragile habitats prone to mechanical and environmental breakdowns and degradation, and with limited natural resources, were better off relying on each other than trying to go it alone. Even without the Interdependency, being interdependent was the best way for humanity to survive.

A therapist who fears dependence will tell his patient, sometimes openly, that the urge to rely is pathologic. In doing so he denigrates a cardinal tool. A parent who rejects a child's desire to depend raises a fragile person. Those children, grown to adulthood, are frequently among those who come for help. Shall we tell them again that no one can find an art to lean on, that each alone must work to ease a private sorrow? Then we shall repeat and experiment already conducted; many know its result only too well. If patient and therapist are to proceed together down a curative path, they must allow limbic regulation and its companion moon, dependence, to make the revolutionary magic. Many therapists believe that reliance fosters a detrimental dependency. Instead, they say, patients should be directed to "do it for themselves" - as if they possess everything but the wit to throw that switch and get on with their lives. But people do not learn emotional modulation as they do geometry or the names of state capitals. They absorb the skill from living in the presence of an adept external modulator, and they learn it implicitly. Knowledge leaps the gap from one mind to the other, but the learner does not experience the transferred information as an explicit strategy. Instead, a spontaneous capacity germinates and becomes a natural part of the self, like knowing how to ride a bike or tie one's shoes. The effortful beginnings fade and disappear from memory. (171)

And you two could use someone else around. Aunt Lillian, you’re too hard on Ash, and he’s going to start having the vapors and taking to the fainting couch.” “Oh, thanks,” Ash snapped, and Jared grinned at him. “You can’t be mean to him all the time. I want to be mean to him sometimes. We can switch days. I doubt we can get along,” Jared said. “But we could rely on each other enough to know that we’ll turn on anyone who goes after one of us. And we could have fights and know nobody’s going to run away and live in the tavern.” “You can rest assured, Jared,” Lillian said, very drily, “I do not ever intend to run away and live in the tavern. 

Family came first. Always first. We took care of each other and relied on each other. Without the family and without Christian, everything else would be worthless. Fortune came next. It almost seemed shallow to have fortune before future, but we realized that fortune was more than wealth. It was health, goals, and maintaining what we had in the work we wanted to contribute to the world. Our fortune was the things for which we were thankful and the things we had to give. Future came last. Private ambitions, plans for the years down the road, and other goals that could possibly take our attention away from each other and our jobs would be considered only if everything else was strong.

You will shape up and get better... But you’ll always have others to rely on as well. It’s the fact that we’re not each a detective going solo. We’re together. The unique talents of our friends fill in where we lack. There’s nothing wrong with that.

In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away—of their corrosive function—just as etching depends on the corrosive power of nitric acid. Yet the simile is not accurate enough; for the copper and the nitric acid used in etching are on a par with each other, both being extracted from nature, while the relation of words to reality is not that of the acid to the plate. Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words themselves will be corroded too. It might be more appropriate, in fact, to liken their action to that of excess stomach fluids that digest and gradually eat away the stomach itself.

Sammi,” Alex said, still holding on to her arm, firmly, but not hurting her. “Don’t do that.” “Do what?” Sam asked a bit peevishly. “Don’t lie and tell me what you think I want to hear rather than how you really feel.” After a beat where Sam didn’t say anything he continued. “If you want to tell me to piss off, tell me. If I do something that hurts your feelings, tell me.” His voice suddenly lowered and he took her hands in his. Sam had to lean into him to hear him over the noise of the barn. “For the love of God, you’re the only real person here. If I can’t rely on you to tell me like it is, who will?” He paused. “Now, please tell me what upset you.” “It’s just that…..” she paused, finally continuing when Alex squeezed her hand. “I don’t fit in with the other women here, and I don’t want you to see me as…less…then they are.” “I don’t see you as less.” Alex immediately said, not even pausing to think about what he wanted to say. “We don’t really know each other, but when I’m lying in my cot at night I find myself thinking about you and what you are thinking about.” He brushed his knuckle over her reddening cheek and continued, “I would never intentionally insult you like that. I just have to learn how I can tease you and not have you take offense.

That’s the incredible high we all call being “in love.” Unfortunately, once they expect this feeling to come from the other person, they cut themselves off from the energy in the universe and begin to rely even more on the energy from each other – only now there doesn’t seem to be enough and so they stop giving each other energy and fall back into their dramas in an attempt to control each other and force the other’s energy their way. At this point the relationship degenerates into the usual power struggle

..."Why are you so nice? It doesn't make sense. I'm not your woman. I'm not your people" "We're all each other's people. Just like we're all our brothers' keepers. We forget it sometimes. When everything's going to pieces, people can forget. But in the end? We're all in it together..." "I used to know this Indian guy... the thing he said that stuck with me was that people are one here in America. They're all alone. And they don't trust anyone except themselves, and they don't rely on anyone except themselves. He said that was why he thought India would survive all this apocalyptic shit, but America wouldn't. Because here, no knew their neighbors." He laughed at that. "I can still remember his head wagging back and forth, 'No one is knowing their neighbors.

The trees reminded me of unity, all lined up peacefully. I thought about who we all are as people, how we come together in moments we need hope. I thought about how we draw inspiration from each other, how we long to be in love with another. I wondered how many of us have someone else to rely on, what happens when we don’t. The nightmares that play over and over again when the days seem like they are running out of hope. And I wanted to stretch my arms out wide, welcome the hopes and dreams of others, nurture them, support them, remind you that things keep moving no matter how strange and difficult the world seems. The trees will continue to line the roads; the sun will shine through the clouds; and despite a very real feeling of doubt, just know that of you, I’ll always be proud.

In this way, the Church was a true reflection of the whole of Russian society. The KGB and the Russian people had penetrated each other to such an extent that they could not be separated. The culture of betrayal and suspicion and distrust that the KGB relied on had become part of the national culture, poisoning politics in the 1990s and beyond: decades of corruption, murder and sordid sex scandals. If it cannot purge itself, however, the Russian nation will never rid itself of the illness that has driven people to alcohol. Russians need to trust each other again.

All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.

The main difference between these alternatives is symmetry. Dependence is an asymmetrical involvement: One person needs the other, but not vice versa, so the needy person is one-down. Interdependence is symmetrical: Both parties rely on each other, so neither is one-up or one-down. Moreover,

In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the alter, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species." After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: "We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves." Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty furiously to complain that they had expected their partner to be content with them alone. Instead they could more poignantly and justly cry, "I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness which our hard-won marriage represents." Thereafter, an affair would be a betrayal not of intimate joy but of a reciprocal pledge to endure the disappointments of marriage with bravery and stoic reserve.

Over the generations, we have bred and inbred our canine companions to the point of disease and deformity. One analysis of popular dog breeds turned up a total of 396 inherited diseases affecting the canines; each breed included in the analysis had been linked to at least four, and as many as seventy-seven, different hereditary afflictions… In some cases, these disorders are nasty side effects of a small gene pool, of generations of breeding related dogs or relying on just a few popular sires. In others, they’re due to intentional selection for the exaggerated physical traits prized by kennel clubs and dog show judges.

God doesn’t depend primarily on the words of his disciples, nor on their clever apologetic arguments, nor on their ability to concoct ingenious marketing techniques. God relies on his disciples participating in the love that he is and thus replicating it toward each other within the body and toward all others outside the body.

helping a friend be their best—and relying on their help in return. It is a conscious decision to bring our full selves to our friendships and to not let insecurity or envy ravage them. It’s a practice of cultivating a spirit of genuine happiness and excitement when our friends are doing well, and being there for them when they aren’t.

In the area of linguistics, there are major language groups: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Greek, German, French, and so on. Most of us grow up learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or native tongue. Later, we may learn additional languages but usually with much more effort. These become our secondary languages. We speak and understand best our native language. We feel most comfortable speaking that language. The more we use a secondary language, the more comfortable we become conversing in it. If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communication will be limited. We must rely on pointing, grunting, drawing pictures, or acting out our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward. Language differences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate. In the area of love, it is similar. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other. My friend on the plane was speaking the language of “Affirming Words” to his third wife when he said, “I told her how beautiful she was. I told her I loved her. I told her how proud I was to be her husband.” He was speaking love, and he was sincere, but she did not understand his language. Perhaps she was looking for love in his behavior and didn’t see it. Being sincere is not enough. We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love.

Ceauşescu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Despite occasional tensions, these parties helped each other in times of need, or at least guaranteed that no outsider poked his nose into the socialist paradise. Under such conditions, despite all the hardship and suffering inflicted on them by the ruling elite, the 20 million Romanians were unable to organise any effective opposition.

Theory,” it was an operating principle of our friendship. We came to define Shine Theory as an investment, over the long term, in helping a friend be their best—and relying on their help in return. It is a conscious decision to bring our full selves to our friendships and to not let insecurity or envy ravage them. It’s a practice of cultivating a spirit of genuine happiness and excitement when our friends are doing well, and being there for them when they aren’t.

Honest concern for others is the key factor in improving our day-to-day lives. When you are warm-hearted, there is no room for anger, jealousy, or insecurity. A calm mind and self-confidence are the basis for happy and peaceful relations with each other. Healthy, happy families and a healthy, peaceful nation are dependent on warm-heartedness. Some scientists have observed that constant anger and fear eat away at our immune system, whereas a calm mind strengthens it. We have to see how we can fundamentally change our education system so that we can train people to develop warm-heartedness early on in order to create a healthier society. I don't mean we need to change the whole system—just improve it. We need to encourage an understanding that inner peace comes from relying on human values like love, compassion, tolerance, and honesty, and that peace in the world relies on individuals finding inner peace. —HIS HOLINESS, THE DALAI LAMA

instead of relying on our relationship to meet all our needs for love, acceptance, and security, we could actually provide some of these feelings for ourselves. And this would mean that we had even more in our hearts to give to each other. We were both so moved by the concept of self-compassion that in our marriage ceremony later that year, each of us ended our vows by saying “Most of all, I promise to help you have compassion for yourself, so that you can thrive and be happy.

Nobody is a whole team . . . We need each other. You need someone and someone needs you. Isolated islands we’re not. To make this thing called life work, we gotta lean and support. And relate and respond. And give and take. And confess and forgive. And reach out and embrace and rely . . . Since none of us is a whole, independent, self-sufficient, super-capable, all-powerful hotshot, let’s quit acting like we are. Life’s lonely enough without our playing that silly role. The game is over. Let’s link up.

While a husband or wife might be able to cope with the missing part, children do not fare as well. Babies are not able to rely on reason or intellect to measure the stability of the world around them, so by design, they depend heavily on their senses. There are certain aspects of the marriage relationship that children need to witness routinely. Children need to see an on-going love relationship that includes Mom and Dad enjoying each other as friends and not just parents. They also need to see their parents talking, laughing, working together and resolving conflicts with a mutual respect for each other. We cannot over emphasize this point: the more parents demonstrate love for each other, the more they saturate their child’s senses with confidence of a loving, safe and secure world. That marriage relationship provides children with a layer of love and security that cannot be achieved through the direct parent-child relationship—even during the baby years. When you put all of these factors together, they add up to a healthy home environment.

Melancholy isn’t, of course, a disorder that needs to be cured. It’s a species of intelligent grief which arises when we come face to face with the certainty that disappointment is written into the script from the start. We have not been singled out. Marrying anyone, even the most suitable of beings, comes down to a case of identifying which variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for. In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: “We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.” After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: “We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves.” Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty furiously to complain that they had expected their partner to be content with them alone. Instead they could more poignantly and justly cry, “I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness which our hard-won marriage represents.” Thereafter, an affair would be a betrayal not of intimate joy but of a reciprocal pledge to endure the disappointments of marriage with bravery and stoic reserve.

Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.

Believing is not to be reduced to thinking that such-and-such might be the case. It is not a weaker form of thinking, laced with doubt. Sometimes we speak like this: ‘I believe that the train leaves at 6:13', where ‘I believe that’ simply means that ‘I think (but am not certain) that’. Since the left hemisphere is concerned with what is certain, with knowledge of the facts, its version of belief is that it is just absence of certainty. If the facts were certain, according to its view, I should be able to say ‘I know that’ instead. This view of belief comes from the left hemisphere's disposition towards the world: interest in what is useful, therefore fixed and certain (the train timetable is no good if one can't rely on it). So belief is just a feeble form of knowing, as far as it is concerned. But belief in terms of the right hemisphere is different, because its disposition towards the world is different. The right hemisphere does not ‘know’ anything, in the sense of certain knowledge. For it, belief is a matter of care: it describes a relationship, where there is a calling and an answering, the root concept of ‘responsibility’. Thus if I say that ‘I believe in you’, it does not mean that I think that such-and-such things are the case about you, but can't be certain that I am right. It means that I stand in a certain sort of relation of care towards you, that entails me in certain kinds of ways of behaving (acting and being) towards you, and entails on you the responsibility of certain ways of acting and being as well. It is an acting ‘as if’ certain things were true about you that in the nature of things cannot be certain. It has the characteristic right-hemisphere qualities of being a betweenness: a reverberative, ‘re-sonant’, ‘respons-ible’ relationship, in which each party is altered by the other and by the relationship between the two, whereas the relationship of the believer to the believed in the left-hemisphere sense is inert, unidirectional, and centres on control rather than care. I think this is what Wittgenstein was trying to express when he wrote that ‘my’ attitude towards the other is an ‘attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.’ An ‘opinion’ would be a weak form of knowledge: that is not what is meant by a belief, a disposition or an ‘attitude’. This helps illuminate belief in God. This is not reducible to a question of a factual answer to the question ‘does God exist?’, assuming for the moment that the expression ‘a factual answer’ has a meaning. It is having an attitude, holding a disposition towards the world, whereby that world, as it comes into being for me, is one in which God belongs. The belief alters the world, but also alters me. Is it true that God exists? Truth is a disposition, one of being true to someone or something. One cannot believe in nothing and thus avoid belief altogether, simply because one cannot have no disposition towards the world, that being in itself a disposition. Some people choose to believe in materialism; they act ‘as if’ such a philosophy were true. An answer to the question whether God exists could only come from my acting ‘as if’ God is, and in this way being true to God, and experiencing God (or not, as the case might be) as true to me. If I am a believer, I have to believe in God, and God, if he exists, has to believe in me. Rather like Escher's hands, the belief must arise reciprocally, not by a linear process of reasoning. This acting ‘as if’ is not a sort of cop-out, an admission that ‘really’ one does not believe what one pretends to believe. Quite the opposite: as Hans Vaihinger understood, all knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, is no more than an acting ‘as if’ certain models were, for the time being, true. Truth and belief, once more, as in their etymology, are profoundly connected. It is only the left hemisphere that thinks there is certainty to be found anywhere.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

There are many . . . whose biggest concern each day—and I'm not exaggerating—is how to burn the proper number of calories for their specific body type based on diet and amount of strenuous exercise. Think about that in the context of human history. Talk about sad. There's something about modernity and what we value now. Our shift in morality. Is there a general lack of compassion? Of interest in others? In connections? It's all related. How are we supposed to achieve a feeling of significance and purpose without a link to something bigger than our own lives? The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfillment rely on the presence of others, even just one other. The same way sadness requires happiness, and vice versa.

Like the wild animals I make my paths. This conclusion came later. Like the redbuck, no, not like the redbuck and the zebra, not like the buffalo or herd animals of whatever kind that supplement each other's senses and confront crises together and survive what alone they would be too weak for, and that yet fall prey as individuals, and yet die alone, each in his time. I tread my own track, so clearly purposeful that I know I have already dwelt a long time in these pars, or rather there has never been any question of dwelling. Rather I should say: I too survive here, but I rely on myself, and even on the days when it feels as if everywhere under the earth there are snake-eggs lying, even then I have to fend for myself and try not to tread on them.

The inevitable consequence is that the wealthy become dominant. The wealthy set their own pay or the company boards pay very generously. Each company board, in hiring a new CEO, feels it must pay as much or more than the competitive companies pay their CEO, rather than using the firm’s earnings or share price or some other yardstick. In many sectors, especially in the financial sector, there is more collusion than real competition. The wealthy see their pay as describing their worth, and they rely on their wealth and political influence to defeat democratic measures to contain or tax them sufficiently. Democracy is therefore in danger of being destroyed by capitalism. Unless there is higher taxation on wealth and more regulation to promote real competition, democracy is subverted.8

Through this process, wisdom clarifies the way that the mind manufacturers emotion and karma, and finally penetrates the illusion of self. Just as though one were investigating how a magician created his display of illusions, one studies mental events to understand the conditions and causes that support the operation of ordinary self-oriented experience. One first understands the root emotions as the basis for samsara, then studies the workings of the associated emotions and how each one manifests a distinctive character. Gradually, the manner in which the self supports emotion and emotion supports the sense of self becomes clear. Self and emotion are seen as relying on and reinforcing each other's existence. Understanding how this collusion gives rise to the whole range of samsaric delusion liberates the mind from all forms of deception.

People are as blinded by emotion as you were a few minutes ago. There are very few people these days who have eyes-to-see and ears-to-hear truth. Social engineering through cover-up, censorship, and contrived news keeps the public fearful and emotionally arguing over ancient issues like abortion, cloning, gun control, and song lyrics. People hopelessly rely on government to tell them what to do, then blindly blame and fight each other in drug and race wars designed to separate them from the truth and each other.” “People are so easily led, it’s no wonder the criminals I knew in DC refer to them as sheeple. Byrd even said that 95% of the people want to be led by the ruling 5%.” “That is a widely known fact,” Mark said, “that gives folks like me hope. We only need the majority of that 5% to know and live truth in order to have leaders like Von Raab in power.

History is storytelling,’” Yaw repeated. He walked down the aisles between the rows of seats, making sure to look each boy in the eye. Once he finished walking and stood in the back of the room, where the boys would have to crane their necks in order to see him, he asked, “Who would like to tell the story of how I got my scar?” The students began to squirm, their limbs growing limp and wobbly. They looked at each other, coughed, looked away. “Don’t be shy,” Yaw said, smiling now, nodding encouragingly. “Peter?” he asked. The boy who only seconds before had been so happy to speak began to plead with his eyes. The first day with a new class was always Yaw’s favorite. “Mr. Agyekum, sah?” Peter said. “What story have you heard? About my scar?” Yaw asked, smiling still, hoping, now to ease some of the child’s growing fear. Peter cleared his throat and looked at the ground. “They say you were born of fire,” he started. “That this is why you are so smart. Because you were lit by fire.” “Anyone else?” Timidly, a boy named Edem raised his hand. “They say your mother was fighting evil spirits from Asamando.” Then William: “I heard your father was so sad by the Asante loss that he cursed the gods, and the gods took vengeance.” Another, named Thomas: “I heard you did it to yourself, so that you would have something to talk about on the first day of class.” All the boys laughed, and Yaw had to stifle his own amusement. Word of his lesson had gotten around, he knew. The older boys told some of the younger ones what to expect from him. Still, he continued, making his way back to the front of the room to look at his students, the bright boys from the uncertain Gold Coast, learning the white book from a scarred man. “Whose story is correct?” Yaw asked them. They looked around at the boys who had spoken, as though trying to establish their allegiance by holding a gaze, casting a vote by sending a glance. Finally, once the murmuring subsided, Peter raised his hand. “Mr. Agyekum, we cannot know which story is correct.” He looked at the rest of the class, slowly understanding. “We cannot know which story is correct because we were not there.” Yaw nodded. He sat in his chair at the front of the room and looked at all the young men. “This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories. Kojo Nyarko says that when the warriors came to his village their coats were red, but Kwame Adu says that they were blue. Whose story do we believe, then?” The boys were silent. They stared at him, waiting. “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.

decades. Why are revolutions so rare? Why do the masses sometimes clap and cheer for centuries on end, doing everything the man on the balcony commands them, even though they could in theory charge forward at any moment and tear him to pieces? Ceaus¸escu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Despite occasional tensions, these parties helped each other in times of need, or at least guaranteed that no outsider poked his nose into the socialist paradise. Under such conditions, despite all the hardship and suffering inflicted on them by the ruling elite, the 20 million Romanians were unable to organise any effective opposition.

What is contrary to the visible truth must change or disappear—that's the law of life. We have this advantage over our ancestors of a thousand years ago, that we can see the past in depth, which they couldn't. We have this other advantage, that we can see it in breadth—an ability that likewise escaped them. For a world population of two thousand two hundred and fifty millions, one can count on the earth a hundred and seventy religions of a certain importance—each of them claiming, of course, to be the repository of the truth. At least a hundred and sixty-nine of them, therefore, are mistaken! Amongst the religions practised to-day, there is none that goes back further than two thousand five hundred years. But there have been human beings, in the baboon category, for at least three hundred thousand years. There is less distance between the man-ape and the ordinary modern man than there is between the ordinary modern man and a man like Schopenhauer. In comparison with this millenary past, what does a period of two thousand years signify? The universe, in its material elements, has the same composition whether we're speaking of the earth, the sun or any other planet. It is impossible to suppose nowadays that organic life exists only on our planet. Does the knowledge brought by science make men happy? That I don't know. But I observe that man can be happy by deluding himself with false knowledge. I grant one must cultivate tolerance. It's senseless to encourage man in the idea that he's a king of creation, as the scientist of the past century tried to make him believe. That same man who, in order to get about quicker, has to straddle a horse—that mammiferous, brainless being! I don't know a more ridiculous claim. The Russians were entitled to attack their priests, but they had no right to assail the idea of a supreme force. It's a fact that we're feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly. In that case, it's better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all. Who's that little Bolshevik professor who claims to triumph over creation? People like that, we'll break them. Whether we rely on the catechism or on philosophy, we have possibilities in reserve, whilst they, with their purely materialistic conceptions, can only devour one another.

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

Why do the ambiance of self-doubt and a shroud of multiple layers of contradictions underscore my confusion? Can I attain happiness by carving out a protective niche in the world, a place where my thoughts can roam free, a safe place where I can work unencumbered by silly worries that mar an ordinary life? I am free to do as I please, so why does life seem so bewildering, difficult, frustrating, and unsatisfying? Am I any different from other people? Do all people by their very nature stretch their puniness to know? Does it place a person in jeopardy to reach out to explore the difference between the known and the unknown? Is the risk to gain self-knowledge and determine how one fits into the world that surrounds us a worthwhile proposition? Is the desire to expand a person’s understanding of humanity and enhance their comprehension of humankind’s role in an interconnected world a journey that we each must undertake in our own way in order to exact a hard won scrap of perception that every civilization builds its structural pillars upon and every person relies upon in order to survive? Will a haphazard quest to obtain personal knowledge parlay my ruin or can cerebral effort jumpstart personal salvation?

Ultimately, the World Top Incomes Database (WTID), which is based on the joint work of some thirty researchers around the world, is the largest historical database available concerning the evolution of income inequality; it is the primary source of data for this book.24 The book’s second most important source of data, on which I will actually draw first, concerns wealth, including both the distribution of wealth and its relation to income. Wealth also generates income and is therefore important on the income study side of things as well. Indeed, income consists of two components: income from labor (wages, salaries, bonuses, earnings from nonwage labor, and other remuneration statutorily classified as labor related) and income from capital (rent, dividends, interest, profits, capital gains, royalties, and other income derived from the mere fact of owning capital in the form of land, real estate, financial instruments, industrial equipment, etc., again regardless of its precise legal classification). The WTID contains a great deal of information about the evolution of income from capital over the course of the twentieth century. It is nevertheless essential to complete this information by looking at sources directly concerned with wealth. Here I rely on three distinct types of historical data and methodology, each of which is complementary to the others.25 In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth.26 This

One argument of Uniqueness is that it is not any particular renaissance, revolution, or liberal institution that marks out the West, but its far higher levels of achievement in all the intellectual and artistic spheres of life. I relied on Charles Murray’s book, Human Accomplishment: Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, to make this argument.[1] This book is the first effort to quantify ‘as facts’ the accomplishments of individuals and countries across the world in the arts and sciences, by calculating the amount of space allocated to these individuals in reference works, encyclopaedias, and dictionaries. Murray concludes that ‘whether measured in people or events, 97% of accomplishment in the scientific inventories occurred in Europe and North America’ from 800 BC to 1950.[2] Murray also notes the far higher accomplishments of Europeans in the arts, particularly after 1400. Although Murray does not compare their achievements but compiles separate lists for each civilisation, he notes that the sheer number of ‘significant figures’ in the arts is higher in the West in comparison to the combined number of the other civilisations.[3] In literature, the number in the West is 835; whereas in India, the Arab World, China, and Japan combined, the number is 293. In the visual arts, it is 479 for the West as compared to 192 for China and Japan combined (with no significant figures listed for India and the Arab World). In music, ‘the lack of a tradition of named composers in non-Western civilization means that the Western total of 522 significant figures has no real competition at all’.

Don’t tell me every revolution is peaceful. Revolutions rely on the tireless work of faceless masses whose lives mean so little individually that their names weren’t known to their movements even when alive. There is no bloodless revolution, only necessary revolution, when a system becomes so deeply broken you can’t affect change from the inside. When the system itself has become calcified so permanently that change is not possible . . . that is when the knives come out. I used to believe, as others did, that we could work within the existing system, that moderate change was possible. But when you take away the ability of the people to effect change within the rules of the system, those people become desperate. And it is desperate people who overthrow their governments. The corps tell us each individual should reap the profits of “their” hard work. But the reality is the corps made their fortunes on the backs of laborers and soldiers paid just enough to keep them alive. The corps did not labor. Do not labor. The shareholders and upper management sit in their glass towers and drink liquor spiked with our blood. Instead of sharing that wealth with those who broke their backs to attain it, they hoard it like great dragons. Any human power can be changed by human beings. That is a truth, a constant. Humans can’t build power structures that cannot be destroyed. We are the power structure. There was a time when human beings believed they were their governments. They understood they had power over them, because they created them. They did not simply wait around for their governments to give them rights and freedoms. They demanded them. People should not be afraid of the corporations. Corporations should be afraid of the people.

The moral here is that nature and nurture should not be opposed. Pure learning, in the absence of any innate constraints, simply does not exist. Any learning algorithm contains, in one way or another, a set of assumptions about the domain to be learned. Rather than trying to learn everything from scratch, it is much more effective to rely on prior assumptions that clearly delineate the basic laws of the domain that must be explored, and integrate these laws into the very architecture of the system. The more innate assumptions there are, the faster learning is (provided, of course, that these assumptions are correct!). This is universally true. It would be wrong, for example, to think that the AlphaGo Zero software, which trained itself in Go by playing against itself, started from nothing: its initial representation included, among other things, knowledge of the topography and symmetries of the game, which divided the search space by a factor of eight. Our brain too is molded with assumptions of all kinds. Shortly, we will see that, at birth, babies' brains are already organized and knowledgeable. They know, implicitly, that the world is made of things that move only when pushed, without ever interpenetrating each other (solid objects)—and also that it contains much stranger entities that speak and move by themselves (people). No need to learn these laws: since they are true everywhere humans live, our genome hardwires them into the brain, thus constraining and speeding up learning. Babies do not have to learn everything about the world: their brains are full of innate constraints, and only the specific parameters that vary unpredictably (such as face shape, eye color, tone of voice, and individual tastes of the people around them) remain to be acquired.

Principles That Great Teachers Follow Great teachers know that each brain is unique and uniquely organized. Great teachers know that all brains are not equally good at everything. Great teachers know that the brain is a complex, dynamic system and is changed daily by experiences. Great teachers know that learning is a constructivist process, and that the ability to learn continues through developmental stages as an individual matures. Great teachers know that the search for meaning is innate in human nature. Great teachers know that brains have a high degree of plasticity and develop throughout the lifespan. Great teachers know that MBE science principles apply to all ages. Great teachers know that learning is based in part on the brain’s ability to self-correct. Great teachers know that the search for meaning occurs through pattern recognition. Great teachers know that brains seek novelty. Great teachers know that emotions are critical to detecting patterns, to decision-making, and to learning. Great teachers know that learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. Great teachers know that human learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception. Great teachers know that the brain conceptually processes parts and wholes simultaneously. Great teachers know that the brain depends on interactions with other people to make sense of social situations. Great teachers know that feedback is important to learning. Great teachers know that learning relies on memory and attention. Great teachers know that memory systems differ in input and recall. Great teachers know that the brain remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in natural contexts. Great teachers know that learning involves conscious and unconscious processes. Great teachers know that learning engages the entire physiology (the body influences the brain, and the brain controls the body).

Theistic absolutism and realism are the basic ontological principles of Kashmir Shaivism. In this philosophy everything that exists is real, and yet is spiritual as well, because everything is the manifestation of an absolute reality, described as pure, eternal, and infinite Consciousness. According to the ancient authors of this philosophy, the essential features of Consciousness are Its infinite, divine, and joyful vitality, and the inclination to manifest Its powers of creation, preservation, dissolution, obscuration, and revelation. The vibrant, creative quality is the divine essence of God. Consciousness is also described as luminous. It illuminates Itself and is always aware of Itself and everything within It. The ancient masters refer in various ways to this One creative force out of which everything emerges. It is known most commonly as the Ultimate, Absolute Reality, Consciousness, Paramasiva, and God. Yet, according to Kashmir Shaivism, Paramasiva cannot be fully described or clearly thought over because, being infinite in nature, He cannot be confined to any thinking or speaking ability. No words can fully describe Him, no mind can correctly think about Him, and no understanding can perfectly understand Him. This is His absoluteness, and Kashmir Shaivism considers this absoluteness to be one of His key attributes. Because the Absolute cannot be fathomed with the intellect or through ordinary logical reasoning and philosophical speculation, the ancient masters relied on revelation (darsana) in deep yogic states to arrive at their understanding and truths of Reality. Working from the foundation of absolute non-dualism, they discovered Paramasiva within their own consciousness; looking within they found the Whole. They were able to transcend the ordinary limited vision of the individual self, and to discover the universal Self. Since this Self of each individual is claimed to be none other than the Absolute, and because God and the Self are understood as one, this philosophy is truly theistic. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 15–16.

It is easier to attain Marx's goal, however, if you do not have to rely on everyone being morally magnificent all the time. Socialism is not a society which requires resplendent virtue of its citizens. It does not mean that we have to be wrapped around each other all the time in some great orgy of togetherness. This is because the mechanisms which would allow Marx's goal to be approached would actually be built into social institutions. They would not rely in the first place on the goodwill of the individual.... One would expect any socialist institution to have its fair share of chancers, toadies, bullies, cheats, loafers, scroungers, freeloaders, free riders and occasional psychopaths...Communism would not spell the end of human strife. Only the literal end of history would do that. Envy, aggression, domination, possessiveness and competition would still exist. It is just that they could not take the forms they assume under capitalism - not because of some superior human virtue, but because of a change of institutions. These vices would no longer be bound up with the exploitation of child labour, colonial violence, grotesque social inequalities and cutthroat economic competition. Instead, they would have to assume some other form. Tribal societies have their fair share of violence, rivalry and hunger for power, but these things cannot take the form of imperial warfare, free-market competition or mass unemployment, because such institutions do not exist among the Nuer or the Dinka. There are villains everywhere you look, but only some of these moral ruffians are so placed as to be able to steal pension funds or pump the media full of lying political propaganda. Most gangsters are not in a position to do so. Instead, they have to content themselves with hanging people from meat hooks. In a socialist society, nobody would be in a position to do so. This is not because they would be too saintly, but because there would be no private pension funds or privately owned media. Shakespeare's villains had to find outlets for their wickedness other than firing missiles at Palestinian refugees. You cannot be a bullying industrial magnate if there isn't any industry around.

Intentions precede our deeds, and then are left lying in the wake of those deeds. I am not the voice of posterity, Anomander Rake. Nor are you.’ ‘Rake?’ ‘Purake is an Azathanai word,’ Brood said. ‘You did not know? It was an honorific granted to your family, to your father in his youth.’ ‘Why? How did he earn it?’ The Azathanai shrugged. ‘K’rul gave it. He did not share his reasons. Or, rather, “she”, as K’rul is wont to change his mind’s way of thinking, and so assumes a woman’s guise every few centuries. He is now a man, but back then he was a woman.’ ‘Do you know its meaning, Caladan?’ ‘Pur Rakess Calas ne A’nom. Roughly, Strength in Standing Still.’ ‘A’nom,’ said the Son of Darkness, frowning. ‘Perhaps,’ the Azathanai said, ‘as a babe, you were quick to stand.’ ‘And Rakess? Or Rake, as you would call me?’ ‘Only what I see in you, and what all others see in you. Strength.’ ‘I feel no such thing.’ ‘No one who is strong does.’ They had conversed as if Endest was not there, as if he was deaf to their words. The two men, Tiste and Azathanai, had begun forging something between them, and whatever it was, it was unafraid of truths. ‘My father died because he would not retreat from battle.’ ‘Your father was bound in the chains of his family name.’ ‘As I will be, Caladan? You give me hope.’ ‘Forgive me, Rake, but strength is not always a virtue. I will raise no monument to you.’ The Son of Darkness had smiled, then. ‘At last, you say something that wholly pleases me.’ ‘Yet still you are worshipped. Many by nature would hide in strength’s shadow.’ ‘I will defy them.’ ‘Such principles are rarely appreciated,’ Caladan said. ‘Expect excoriation. Condemnation. Those who are not your equals will claim for their own that equality, and yet will meet your eyes with expectation, with profound presumption. Every kindness you yield they will take as deserved, but such appetites are unending, and your denial is the crime they but await. Commit it and witness their subsequent vilification.’ Anomander shrugged at that, as if the expectations of others meant nothing to him, and whatever would come from his standing upon the principles he espoused, he would bear it. ‘You promised peace, Caladan. I vowed to hold you to that, and nothing we have said now has changed my mind.’ ‘Yes, I said I would guide you, and I will. And in so doing, I will rely upon your strength, and hope it robust enough to bear each and every burden I place upon it. So I remind myself, and you, with the new name I give you. Will you accept it, Anomander Rake? Will you stand in strength?’ ‘My father’s name proved a curse. Indeed, it proved the death of him.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Very well, Caladan Brood, I will take this first burden.’ Of course. The Son of Darkness could do no less.

Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat…the enemy triumphs…the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work…the cause is asleep…the strong throats are choked with their own blood…the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other…and is liberty gone out of that place? No never. When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go…it waits for all the rest to go…it is the last…When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away…when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators…when the boys are no more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and traitors instead…when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people…when I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves…when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority…when those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—when the swarms of cringers, suckers, dough-faces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no…when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart…and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape…or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.

To every one Jesus has left a work to do, there is no one who can plead that he is excused. Every Christian is to be a worker with Christ; but those to whom he has intrusted large means and abilities have the greater responsibilities. … The Master has given directions, “Occupy till I come.” He is the great proprietor, and has a right to investigate every transaction, and approve or condemn; he has a right to rebuke, to encourage, to counsel, or to expel. The Lord’s work requires careful thought and the highest intellect. He will not inquire how successful you have been in gathering means to hoard, or that you may excel your neighbors in property, and gather attention to yourself while excluding God from your hearts and homes. He will inquire, What have you done to advance my cause with the talents I lent you? What have you done for me in the person of the poor, the afflicted, the orphan, and the fatherless? I was sick, poor, hungry, and destitute of clothing; what did you do for me with my intrusted means? How was the time I lent you employed? How did you use your pen, your voice, your money, your influence? I made you the depositary of a precious trust by opening before you the thrilling truths heralding my second coming. What have you done with the light and knowledge I gave you to make men wise unto salvation? Our Lord has gone away to receive his kingdom; but he will prepare mansions for us, and then will come to take us to himself. In his absence he has given us the privilege of being co-laborers with him in the work of preparing souls to enter those mansions of light and glory. It was not that we might lead a life of worldly pleasure and extravagance that he left the royal courts of Heaven, clothing his divinity with humanity, and becoming poor that we through his poverty might be made rich. He did this that we might follow his example of self-denial for others. Each one of us is building upon the true foundation, wood, hay, and stubble, to be consumed in the last great conflagration, and our life-work be lost, or we are building upon that foundation, gold, silver, and precious stones, which will never perish, but shine the brighter amid the devouring elements that will try every man’s work. Any unfaithfulness in spiritual and eternal things here will result in loss throughout endless ages. Those who lead a Christless life, who exclude Jesus from heart, home, and business, who leave him out of their counsels, and trust to their own heart, and rely on their own judgment, are unfaithful servants, and will receive the reward which their works have merited. At his coming the Master will call his servants, and reckon with them. The parable certainly teaches that good works will be rewarded according to the motive that prompted them; that skill and intellect used in the service of God will prove a success, and will be rewarded according to the fidelity of the worker. Those who have had an eye single to the glory of God will have the richest reward. -ST 11-20-84

We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. A good example of this occurred during the making of Toy Story 2. Earlier, when I described the evolution of that movie, I explained that our decision to overhaul the film so late in the game led to a meltdown of our workforce. This meltdown was the big unexpected event, and our response to it became part of our mythology. But about ten months before the reboot was ordered, in the winter of 1998, we’d been hit with a series of three smaller, random events—the first of which would threaten the future of Pixar. To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines, there is a command—/bin/rm -r -f *—that removes everything on the file system as fast as it can. Hearing that, you can probably anticipate what’s coming: Somehow, by accident, someone used this command on the drives where the Toy Story 2 files were kept. Not just some of the files, either. All of the data that made up the pictures, from objects to backgrounds, from lighting to shading, was dumped out of the system. First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. One by one, the other characters began to vanish, too: Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Hamm, Rex. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive. Oren Jacobs, one of the lead technical directors on the movie, remembers watching this occur in real time. At first, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, he was frantically dialing the phone to reach systems. “Pull out the plug on the Toy Story 2 master machine!” he screamed. When the guy on the other end asked, sensibly, why, Oren screamed louder: “Please, God, just pull it out as fast as you can!” The systems guy moved quickly, but still, two years of work—90 percent of the film—had been erased in a matter of seconds. An hour later, Oren and his boss, Galyn Susman, were in my office, trying to figure out what we would do next. “Don’t worry,” we all reassured each other. “We’ll restore the data from the backup system tonight. We’ll only lose half a day of work.” But then came random event number two: The backup system, we discovered, hadn’t been working correctly. The mechanism we had in place specifically to help us recover from data failures had itself failed. Toy Story 2 was gone and, at this point, the urge to panic was quite real. To reassemble the film would have taken thirty people a solid year. I remember the meeting when, as this devastating reality began to sink in, the company’s leaders gathered in a conference room to discuss our options—of which there seemed to be none. Then, about an hour into our discussion, Galyn Susman, the movie’s supervising technical director, remembered something: “Wait,” she said. “I might have a backup on my home computer.” About six months before, Galyn had had her second baby, which required that she spend more of her time working from home. To make that process more convenient, she’d set up a system that copied the entire film database to her home computer, automatically, once a week. This—our third random event—would be our salvation. Within a minute of her epiphany, Galyn and Oren were in her Volvo, speeding to her home in San Anselmo. They got her computer, wrapped it in blankets, and placed it carefully in the backseat. Then they drove in the slow lane all the way back to the office, where the machine was, as Oren describes it, “carried into Pixar like an Egyptian pharaoh.” Thanks to Galyn’s files, Woody was back—along with the rest of the movie.

Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized