Stable Diffusion Quotes

Concept of Others As “identity diffusion” describes the borderline’s lack of a stable concept of self, “object inconstancy” describes the lack of a stable concept of others. Just as his own self-esteem depends on current

Georges Sorel, to whom fascism is so much indebted, wrote at the beginning of our century that all great movements are compelled by 'myths.' A myth is the strongest belief held by the group, and its adherents feel themselves to be an army of truth fighting an army of evil. Some years earlier, in 1895, the French psychologist Gustav Le Bon had written of the 'conservatism of crowds' which cling tenaciously to traditional ideas. Hitler took the basic nationalism of the German tradition and the longing for stable personal relationships of olden times, and built upon them as the strongest belief of the group. In the diffusion of the 'myth' Hitler fulfilled what Le Bon had forecast: that 'magical powers' were needed to control the crowd. The Fuhrer himself wrote of the 'magic influence' of mass suggestion and the liturgical aspects of his movement, and its success as a mass religion bore out the truth of this view.

What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. You have eaten hay long enough.

All texts are, always, to various degrees, contradictory, multifarious, polysemic. This is not license for epistemological anarchy, according to which anything, any reading, always goes. But it is to acknowledge that no next, whatever its author's (or reader's) intent, can have a simple, singular meaning. Every text will generate something like a tangle of meanings and connotations, more or less concentrated around a core, more or less protean or stable, according to political, social and linguistic context. As one playful formulation has it, rather than being straightforwardly 'about' something in particular, every text is inevitably surrounded by a 'vibrating aboutness cluster'. The context, content and range of that cluster must be accounted for as part of an analysis. Some writers in some situations may strain against rhetorical shenanigans, for example striving for the specificity of logical notation: the cluster of reasonable meanings of such texts may well thus be less diffuse than for those which, say, revel in pun and performance. But a text with one 'true' meaning is a chimera. Analysis is not closure, but an attempt to discern reasonable meaning(s) close to the core of that cluster, and to contest those that range too far from it.

A term used by Terry Real is quite apt for such affairs: stable ambiguity. These are relationships of undefined status but well-established patterns, hard to break out of but just as hard to depend on. By remaining in a diffuse state, people avoid both loneliness and commitment. This strange mix of comforting consistency and uncertainty is increasingly common to relationships in the age of Tinder, but it’s long been characteristic of extramarital liaisons.

The psychologist James Marcia argues that there are four levels of identity creation. The healthiest people have arrived at what he calls “identity achievement.” They’ve explored different identities, told different stories about themselves, and finally settled on a heroic identity that works. Less-evolved people may be in a state of “foreclosure.” They came up with an identity very early in their life—I’m the child who caused my parents to divorce, for instance, or I’m the jock who was a star in high school. They rigidly cling to that identity and never update it. Others may find themselves caught in “identity diffusion.” These are immature people who have never explored their identity. They go through life without a clear identity, never knowing what to do. Then there is “moratorium.” People at this level are perpetually exploring new identities, shape-shifting and trying on one or another, but they never settle on one. They never find that stable imago.

Starting in 2022, publicly available systems like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion used AI to create high-quality graphic art based on text-based prompts from humans.