Standpoint Theory Quotes

Its all about perspective, that is how you look at things. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether an experience, event, situation whatever is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.

Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition.

Its all about perception, that is how you look at. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether it is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.

Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold.

It is yet another of Nietzsche’s merits that he joins to his critique of Enlightenment moralities a sense of their failure to address adequately, let alone to answer the question: what sort of person am I to become? This is in a way an inescapable question in that an answer to it is given in practice in each human life. But for characteristically modern moralities it is a question to be approached only by indirection. The primary question from their standpoint has concerned rules: what rules ought we to follow?

Logic is also the theory of knowledge of Marxism, but for quite another reason, because the forms themselves of the activity of the ‘spirit’ – the categories and schemas of logic – are inferred from investigation of the history of humanity’s knowledge and practice, i.e. from the process in the course of which thinking man (or rather humanity) cognises and transforms the material world. From that standpoint logic also cannot be anything else than a theory explaining the universal schemas of the development of knowledge and of the material world by social man.

Feminists have fought to remove the definition of what a woman is from... masculine institutions and develop their own understandings. Claims to the ‘right’ to self define ‘gender’, subject womanhood to men’s power to define once again.The major task of feminist theory was to bring women out from under the weight of men’s definitions and theories. Feminists developed what has been called ‘feminist standpoint theory’ to describe a new form of knowledge about women, that which is formed out of women’s experience as an oppressed group and refined through struggle and collective process (Harding (ed.), 2004). The very basis of feminism is this declaration of independence, the rejection of men’s ‘knowledge’ about women and the privileging of our own. Men’s ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men’s rule over them. They do not represent ‘truth’ but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology.

Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the state apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of game pieces, the relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a game of the State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game’s form of interiority. Go pieces, I contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function: “It” makes a move. “It” could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. Thus the relations are very different in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary’s pieces: their functioning is structural. One the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology. Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival. The “smooth” space of Go, as against the “striated” space of chess. The nomos of Go against the State of chess, nomos against polis. The difference is that chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go proceeds altogether differently, territorializing and deterritorializing it (make the outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the construction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorialize the enemy by shattering his territory from within; deterritorialize oneself by renouncing, by going elsewhere…) Another justice, another movement, another space-time.

From a nonpatriarchal metaethical standpoint, however, Singer's and Regan's theoretical similarities are as significant as their differences. In particular, both Singer's utilitarian theory and Regan's rights approach are developed within a framework of patriarchal norms, which includes the subordinatin of emotion to reason, the privileging of abstract principles of conduct, the perception of ethical discussion as a battle between adversaries, and the presumption that ethics shoudl function as a means of social control.

Throughout even the most recent applications of Theory, then, we see radical skepticism that knowledge can be objectively, universally, or neutrally true. This leads to a belief that rigor and completeness come not from good methodology, skepticism, and evidence, but from identity-based “standpoints” and multiple “ways of knowing.”33 That such an approach doesn’t tend to work is considered unimportant because it is deemed to be more just. That is, this belief proceeds from an ought that is not necessarily concerned about what is.

page 358-359 In everyday life the exchange of opinion with others checks our partiality and widens our perspective; we are made to see things from their standpoint and the limits of our vision are brought home to us.... The benefits from discussion lie in the fact that even representative legislators are limited in knowledge and the ability to reason. No one of them knows everything the others know, or can make all tie same inferences that they can draw in concert. Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments

Did you know that when the baby starts moving that it’s called the quickening?” Hope says. I snicker. “So she’s going to burst out of my stomach with a sword declaring there can be only one?” “Possibly. Women have died in childbirth, right? The baby is essentially a parasite. It lives off your nutrients, saps your energy.” She taps the bottom of a hanger against her lip. “So yeah, I think the Highlander motto could fit.” Carin and I look at her in horror. “Hopeless, you can shut up any time now,” Carin orders. “I was just saying, from a medical standpoint, it’s a possible theory. Not here, but maybe in other less developed nations.” She reaches over and pats my belly. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. You should’ve gotten more maternity clothes,” she says, moving on to another topic while I’m still digesting that my baby is a parasite.

It will be noticed that the fundamental theorem proved above bears some remarkable resemblances to the second law of thermodynamics. Both are properties of populations, or aggregates, true irrespective of the nature of the units which compose them; both are statistical laws; each requires the constant increase of a measurable quantity, in the one case the entropy of a physical system and in the other the fitness, measured by m, of a biological population. As in the physical world we can conceive the theoretical systems in which dissipative forces are wholly absent, and in which the entropy consequently remains constant, so we can conceive, though we need not expect to find, biological populations in which the genetic variance is absolutely zero, and in which fitness does not increase. Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases—the second law of thermodynamics—holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences. While it is possible that both may ultimately be absorbed by some more general principle, for the present we should note that the laws as they stand present profound differences—-(1) The systems considered in thermodynamics are permanent; species on the contrary are liable to extinction, although biological improvement must be expected to occur up to the end of their existence. (2) Fitness, although measured by a uniform method, is qualitatively different for every different organism, whereas entropy, like temperature, is taken to have the same meaning for all physical systems. (3) Fitness may be increased or decreased by changes in the environment, without reacting quantitatively upon that environment. (4) Entropy changes are exceptional in the physical world in being irreversible, while irreversible evolutionary changes form no exception among biological phenomena. Finally, (5) entropy changes lead to a progressive disorganization of the physical world, at least from the human standpoint of the utilization of energy, while evolutionary changes are generally recognized as producing progressively higher organization in the organic world.

We may regard the cell quite apart from its familiar morphological aspects, and contemplate its constitution from the purely chemical standpoint. We are obliged to adopt the view, that the protoplasm is equipped with certain atomic groups, whose function especially consists in fixing to themselves food-stuffs, of importance to the cell-life. Adopting the nomenclature of organic chemistry, these groups may be designated side-chains. We may assume that the protoplasm consists of a special executive centre (Leistungs-centrum) in connection with which are nutritive side-chains... The relationship of the corresponding groups, i.e., those of the food-stuff, and those of the cell, must be specific. They must be adapted to one another, as, e.g., male and female screw (Pasteur), or as lock and key (E. Fischer).

When you investigate a crime in real time, on air, you have this problem of reverb. The reporting you do today will influence the interviews and responses you get tomorrow, because your subject will have heard your episode, and will know your doubts, and suspicions, and theories, and thoughts. They will know what others have told you. And it will influence what they in turn tell you. That’s fine for fiction, but it’s a serious problem from a journalistic standpoint, the telling of a story influencing the story as it’s unfolding. It’s bait and switch. It’s unfair to the listener. You have your footprints and fingerprints all over the story in a very postmodern way. The risk with that—the reason news organizations don’t do it—is that you’ll find inconsistencies. You’ll find people lied to you. You’ll find you overlooked a piece of information, and you may have to reassess or revamp your story. I’m not saying it’s unethical per se, just that there are these potential pitfalls.—Mark Pattinson, journalism professor, on the ethics of true crime podcasting

Christianity has been the means of reducing more languages to writing than have all other factors combined. It has created more schools, more theories of education, and more systems than has any other one force. More than any other power in history it has impelled men to fight suffering, whether that suffering has come from disease, war or natural disasters. It has built thousands of hospitals, inspired the emergence of the nursing and medical professions, and furthered movement for public health and the relief and prevention of famine. Although explorations and conquests which were in part its outgrowth led to the enslavement of Africans for the plantations of the Americas, men and women whose consciences were awakened by Christianity and whose wills it nerved brought about the abolition of slavery (in England and America). Men and women similarly moved and sustained wrote into the laws of Spain and Portugal provisions to alleviate the ruthless exploitation of the Indians of the New World. Wars have often been waged in the name of Christianity. They have attained their most colossal dimensions through weapons and large–scale organization initiated in (nominal) Christendom. Yet from no other source have there come as many and as strong movements to eliminate or regulate war and to ease the suffering brought by war. From its first centuries, the Christian faith has caused many of its adherents to be uneasy about war. It has led minorities to refuse to have any part in it. It has impelled others to seek to limit war by defining what, in their judgment, from the Christian standpoint is a "just war." In the turbulent Middle Ages of Europe it gave rise to the Truce of God and the Peace of God. In a later era it was the main impulse in the formulation of international law. But for it, the League of Nations and the United Nations would not have been. By its name and symbol, the most extensive organization ever created for the relief of the suffering caused by war, the Red Cross, bears witness to its Christian origin. The list might go on indefinitely. It includes many another humanitarian projects and movements, ideals in government, the reform of prisons and the emergence of criminology, great art and architecture, and outstanding literature.

Of course the no-government ethics will meet with at least as many objections as the no-capital economics. Our minds have been so nurtured in prejudices as to the providential functions of government that anarchist ideas must be received with distrust. Our whole education, from childhood to the grave, nurtures the belief in the necessity of a government and its beneficial effects. Systems of philosophy have been elaborated to support this view; history has been written from this standpoint; theories of law have been circulated and taught for the same purpose. All politics are based on the same principle, each politician saying to people he wants to support him: “Give me the governmental power; I will, I can, relieve you from the hardships of your present life.” All our education is permeated with the same teachings. We may open any book of sociology, history, law, or ethics: everywhere we find government, its organisation, its deeds, playing so prominent a part that we grow accustomed to suppose that the State and the political men are everything; that there is nothing behind the big statesmen. The same teachings are daily repeated in the Press. Whole columns are filled up with minutest records of parliamentary debates, of movements of political persons. And, while reading these columns, we too often forget that besides those few men whose importance has been so swollen up as to overshadow humanity, there is an immense body of men—mankind, in fact—growing and dying, living in happiness or sorrow, labouring and consuming, thinking and creating. And yet, if we revert from the printed matter to our real life, and cast a broad glance on society as it is, we are struck with the infinitesimal part played by government in our life. Millions of human beings live and die without having had anything to do with government. Every day millions of transactions are made without the slightest interference of government; and those who enter into agreements have not the slightest intention of breaking bargains. Nay, those agreements which are not protected by government (those of the exchange, or card debts) am perhaps better kept than any others. The simple habit of keeping one's word, the desire of not losing confidence, are quite sufficient in an overwhelming majority of cases to enforce the keeping of agreements. Of course it may be said that there is still the government which might enforce them if necessary. But without speaking of the numberless cases which could not even be brought before a court, everyone who has the slightest acquaintance with trade will undoubtedly confirm the assertion that, if there were not so strong a feeling of honour in keeping agreements, trade itself would become utterly impossible.

It used to be considered a failure of teaching or scholarship to work from a particular ideological standpoint. Academics were incentivized...by knowing that other scholars could - and would - point out evidence of bias or motivating reasoning and counter it with evidence and argument. Teachers could consider their attempts at objectivity successful if their students did not know what their political or ideological positions were.

degree of objectivity and a view of totality. As Archimedes’s theory of the lever maintains, the greater the distance between the fulcrum of a lever and the object to be lifted, the stronger the motive force that will be applied to it. By the same token, the ability to assume a detached and independent standpoint is taken to increase a thinker’s—and by extension speaker’s—capability to survey his object of study and see it in relation to all other things. The question that arises from this analogy, then, concerns the possible forces set in motion by public speakers who occupy such an assumed location outside Germany’s political and cultural coordinates.

Automatic thoughts occur because the subconscious mind stores information that is meant to protect you. However, it also stores negative associations better than positive ones because it acts as a safety mechanism. Although this is effective from an evolutionary standpoint, it unfortunately perpetuates a lot of anxious and hopeless thoughts. Also keep in mind that since the subconscious mind is programmed through repetition and emotion, the more we perpetuate beliefs, the more deeply ingrained they become over time. So, how do we identify automatic thoughts and the core triggers that created them? Well, the brain is always looking for information to support what it believes. This is called supportive evidence. Supportive evidence is the information that the brain picks out of its environment to reinforce its existing thoughts. In the context of reprogramming your subconscious, this is a negative practice. An example of this may occur if Connor were to go to a work party—remember that he believes that he is fundamentally unworthy of emotional connection. When he walks in, his automatic thoughts include “No one likes me, and no one wants me here.” The brain then begins to look for supportive evidence: Someone frowning in conversation while looking in his direction, to Connor, means that they hate him and want him to leave. With Suneel, supportive evidence may occur when Suneel makes grammatical corrections in the project they’re working on together. To Connor, this may again reinforce that Suneel is trying to undermine him. A powerful aspect of supportive evidence to consider is that it occurs every day and everywhere in our lives. Our mind is constantly looking for supportive evidence of what our subconscious believes. When the subconscious stores fundamentally painful beliefs, they become projected onto our reality everywhere we look. Therefore, it is essential to begin looking for contradictory evidence for our core wounds to reprogram our subconscious and heal our everyday perspectives. Contradictory evidence is information that disproves existing beliefs. Since memory is colored by emotion, finding contradictory evidence in our past and present and pairing it with the emotions associated with that experience allows us to begin reprogramming our subconscious. Essentially, finding proof of the opposite helps to equilibrate our subconscious, and from there, it can be taught new and updated beliefs.

For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: ( I ) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers– with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God–was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam. 11 Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.

For a long time I took a purely theological standpoint on the issue, which is actually so fundamental that it can be used as a springboard for any debate – if environment is the operative factor, for example, if man at the outset is both equal and shapeable and the good man can be shaped by engineering his surroundings, hence my parents’ generation’s belief in the state, the education system and politics, hence their desire to reject everything that had been and hence their new truth, which is not found within man’s inner being, in his detached uniqueness, but on the contrary in areas external to his intrinsic self, in the universal and collective, perhaps expressed in its clearest form by Dag Solstad, who has always been the chronicler of his age, in a text from 1969 containing his famous statement “We won’t give the coffee pot wings”: out with spirituality, out with feeling, in with the new materialism, but it never struck them that the same attitude could lie behind the demolition of old parts of town to make way for roads and parking lots, which naturally the intellectual Left opposed, and perhaps it has not been possible to be aware of this until now when the link between the idea of equality and capitalism, the welfare state and liberalism, Marxist materialism and the consumer society is obvious because the biggest equality creator of all is money, it levels all differences, and if your character and your fate are entities that can be shaped, money is the most natural shaper, and this gives rise to the fascinating phenomena whereby crowds of people assert their individuality and originality by shopping in an identical way while those who ushered all this in with their affirmation of equality, their emphasis on material values and belief in change, are now inveighing against their own handiwork, which they believed the enemy created, but like all simple reasoning this is not wholly true either, life is not a mathematical quantity, it has no theory, only practice, and though it is tempting to understand a generation’s radical rethink of society as being based on its view of the relationship between heredity and environment, this temptation is literary and consists more in the pleasure of speculating, that is, of weaving one’s thoughts through the most disparate areas of human activity, than in the pleasure of proclaiming the truth.

But if we ask whether there was not sonic madness about him, whether his naturally just mind was not subject to some kind of disturbing influence which was not essential to itself, then we ask a very different question, and require, unless I am mistaken, a very different answer. When all Philistine mistakes are set aside, when all mystical ideas are appreciated, there is a real sense in which Blake was mad. It is a practical and certain sense, exactly like the sense in which he was not mad. In fact, in almost every case of his character and extraordinary career we can safely offer this proposition, that if there was something wrong with it, it was wrong even from his own best standpoint. People talk of appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober; it is easy to appeal from Blake mad to Blake sane. When Blake lived at Felpham angels appear to have been as native to the Sussex trees as birds. Hebrew patriarchs walked on the Sussex ])owns as easily as if they were in the desert. Some people will be quite satisfied with saying that the mere solemn attestation of such miracles marks it man as a madman or a liar. But that is a short cut of sceptical dogmatism which is not far removed from inipu- dence. Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the n►ad-house. on all the mystics of history. To call a man mad because lie has seen ghosts is in a literal sense religious persecution. It is denying him his full dignity as a citizen because lie cannot be fitted into your theory of the cosmos. It is disfranchising him because of his religion. It is just as intolerant to tell an old woman that she cannot be a witch as to tell her that she must be a witch. In both cases you are setting your own theory of things inexorably against the sincerity or sanity of human testimony. Such dogmatism at least must be quite as impossible to anyone calling himself an agnostic as to anyone calling himself a spiritualist. You cannot take the region called the unknown and calmly say that though you know nothing about it, you know that all its gates are locked. You cannot say, "This island is not discovered yet; but I am sure that it has a wall of cliffs all round it and no harbour." That was the whole fallacy of Herbert Spencer and Huxley when they talked about the unknowable instead of about the unknown. An agnostic like Huxley must concede the possibility of a gnostic like Blake. We do not know enough about the unknown to

As developed by trans activists, standpoint epistemology says there are special forms of standpoint-related knowledge about trans experience available only to trans people, not cis people. For instance, only trans people can properly understand the pernicious effects of ‘cis privilege’, and how it intersects with other forms of oppression to produce certain kinds of lived experience. As with some versions of feminism and critical race theory, when transmuted through popular culture this has quickly become the idea that only trans people can legitimately say anything about their own nature and interests including on philosophical matters of gender identity. Cis people, including feminists and lesbians, have nothing useful to contribute here. Their assumption that they do have something useful to contribute is a further manifestation of their unmerited privilege.

As Miroslav Volf argues, “Every construction of innocence and guilt partakes in the corruption of the one undertaking the construction because every attempt to escape noninnocence is already ensnared by noninnocence. Just as there is no absolute standpoint from which relative human beings can make absolute judgments, so also there is no ‘pure’ space from which corrupt human beings can make pure judgments about purity and corruption.

In this sense—not in the sense of offering a neutral standpoint—Revelation can be called a critique of ideology. The Christian critique of ideology is not neutral; it is personal.

Authors on attachment theory will assert that being pair-bonded is the prototype for attachment in adulthood, that couples need to create a couple bubble around them in order to ensure security, and that your partner needs to be the one, single or main person that you emotionally depend on. I question if these criteria are even healthy from a monogamous standpoint (a considerable amount of the mono-romantic ideal can actually be codependency in disguise), but at the very least we can see how these ideas and assumptions within the field of attachment are excluding people in CNM relationships.

It goes without saying that it is the traditionally minded Hindu we have in view, and not one whose hereditary dispositions have deviated in an anti-traditional direction, to the point of proving that "corruptio optimi pessima." Hinduism, strictly speaking, has no "dogmas" in the sense that every concept may be denied, on condition that the argument used is intrinsically true; which amounts to saying that concepts can be denied from the standpoint of a higher level of truth, metaphysics standing above cosmology and realization above theory as such. However, on their own level, the scriptural symbols of Hinduism are just as immovable as the Semitic dogmas, and this excludes any fallacious comparison of Hindu doctrine with the opinions of philosophers. No orthodox Hindu can maintain that the Veda has been mistaken on any point whatsoever.

Phenomenology became the grounds for variants of standpoint epistemology: if a phenomenon seems real, then it is real enough. A Marxist vision of standpoint epistemology, on the other hand, does not privilege individual perception as the arbiter of reality.

on March 28, 2007, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that “the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.” This sentiment was echoed the same day by the U.S. Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, assuring a House Appropriations subcommittee that “from the standpoint of the overall economy, my bottom line is we’re watching it closely but it appears to be contained.

More specific material relating to the bourgeois state will be found in subsequent volumes. This approach is of a piece with Marx’s. One must remember that most of the states that Marx had occasion to discuss were not capitalist states—as yet—even in Europe, let alone throughout the rest of the world. From the standpoint of theory this is a good thing, since no phenomenon can be thoroughly understood if only one specimen or type is available for examination. The literature of Marxism and marxology is unfortunately full of statements about Marx’s views which actually apply only to capitalism and the bourgeois era, and which require at least considerable qualification as soon as the focus is widened to include most of the world and world history. It is a form of ethnocentrism.

What is then the central idea of transcendental philosophy? It is to construe each object of science as the focus of a synthesis of phenomena rather than as a thing in itself. And it is to accept accordingly that the very possibility of such objects depends on the connecting structures provided in advance by the procedures used in our research activities. Thus something is objective if it results from a universal and necessary mode of connection of phenomena. In other words, something is objective if it holds true for any (human) active subject, not if it concerns intrinsic properties of autonomous entities. (...) From a transcendental standpoint, the structure of a scientific theory is nothing less than the frame of procedural rationalities that underpin a certain research practice (and that, conversely, were constrained by the resistances arising from the enaction of this practice).

The Genesis account of the advent of mankind (Adam-man) is far more eloquent and significant than a casual reading of the passage in English might suggest. In this majestic “Poem of the Dawn” or “Hymn of Creation” (cf. H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology, Vol. I, Nazarene Publishing House, Kansas City, Mo., pp. 450 ff.), the metaphorical use of the terms “dust,” “image,” “likeness,” “create,” “made,” “breath of life,” and others, contributes much to biblical understanding of man, sin, redemption, holiness, and all the implications of “grace” in relation to man. The writer of the Genesis story chose his words carefully. In 1:26 he tells us that God said, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness,” and (1:27) then, “God created man in his own image … male and female created he them.” Strangely, the second account (Genesis 2) introduces a most mundane and earthy note to the almost too idealistic and incredible first description. “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [‘lives, ’ Hebrew plural, here]; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7; RSV). Note the progress; formed, breathed into, and then the process of becoming. There will be no attempt made here to formulate any theory of man's appearance on earth. These terms are noted to suggest that the wording gives room for more than one interpretation. However, no attempt to interpret these passages from the standpoint of modern science should be permitted to obscure the main ideas proposed in Genesis 1—2. This is not a scientific account nor was it in any sense intended to be. The role of science is to unpack all the facts possible which are built into man and his history and world. But the meaning of man and his universe must be derived from another source. And it is this meaning that the biblical story seeks to impart. This starkly beautiful, unembroidered introduction to man as made in his Creator's image establishes the fundamental religious meaning of man as he stands in relationship to God and to nature. This noble concept must precede and throw light upon all that the Hebraic-Christian teaching will assume about man—a sinful creature as of now, yet created in the Imago Dei.

The logic of standpoint theory and its strong objectivity program … makes clear that homogenous communities of researchers lack the resources to detect many of the community-wide values and interests that shape their own assumptions, policies, and practices. … Moreover, the concept of strong objectivity does capture “real objectivity” in a crucial sense. While it abandons the requirement that maximally objective research must be value-free, it requires that research be fair to all existing evidence and to its severest critics.

Like Wheeler and Feynman, Cramer proposed that the wavefunction of a particle moving forward in time is just one of two relevant waves determining its behavior. The retarded wave in Cramer’s theory is complemented by a response wave that travels specifically from the particle’s destination, in temporal retrograde. In his theory, a measurement, or an interaction, amounts to a kind of “handshake agreement” between the forward-in-time and backward-in-time influences.13 This handshake can extend across enormous lengths of time, if we consider what happens when we view the sky at night. As Cramer writes: When we stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded waves from the star been traveling for a hundred years to reach our eyes, but the advanced waves generated by absorption processes within our eyes have reached a hundred years into the past, completing the transaction that permitted the star to shine in our direction.14 Cramer may not have been aware of it, but his poetic invocation of the spacetime greeting of the eye and a distant star, and the transactional process that would be involved in seeing, was actually a staple of medieval and early Renaissance optics. Before the ray theory of light emerged in the 1600s, it was believed that a visual image was formed when rays projecting out from the eye interacted with those coming into it. It goes to show that everything, even old physics, comes back in style if you wait long enough—and it is another reason not to laugh too hard, or with too much self-assurance, at hand-waving that seems absurd from one’s own limited historical or scientific standpoint. In short: Cramer’s and Aharonov’s theories both imply a backward causal influence from the photon’s destination. The destination of the photon “already knows” it is going to receive the photon, and this is what enables it to behave with the appropriate politeness. Note that neither of these theories have anything to do with billiard balls moving in reverse, a mirror of causation in which particles somehow fly through spacetime and interact in temporal retrograde. That had been the idea at the basis of Gerald Feinberg’s hypothesized tachyons, particles that travel faster than light and thus backward in time. It inspired a lot of creative thinking about the possibilities of precognition and other forms of ESP in the early 1970s (and especially inspired the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick), but we can now safely set aside that clunky and unworkable line of thinking as “vulgar retrocausation.” No trace of tachyons has turned up in any particle accelerator, and they don’t make sense anyway. What we are talking about here instead is an inflection of ordinary particles’ observable behavior by something ordinarily unobservable: measurements—that is, interactions—that lie ahead in those particles’ future histories. Nothing is “moving” backwards in time—and really, nothing is “moving” forwards in time either. A particle’s twists and turns as it stretches across time simply contain information about both its past and its future.

Standpoint theory often finds itself criticized for essentialism—for thinking something like “all black people feel like this.”27 This isn’t quite wrong because it rests, in a way, on a concept we’ve encountered before: strategic essentialism, wherein members of an oppressed group can essentialize themselves (or, here, the authenticity of their lived experience in relationship to power) as a means of achieving group political action. Its advocates don’t defend it that way, however. They generally get around this accusation by arguing that the theory does not assume all members of the same group have the same nature but that they experience the same problems in an unjust society, although they can choose which discourses they wish to contribute to. Members of these groups who disagree with standpoint theory—or even deny that they are oppressed—are explained away as having internalized their oppression (false consciousness) or as pandering in order to gain favor or reward from the dominant system (“Uncle Toms” and “native informants”) by amplifying Theoretically dominant discourses.

Gone was the central focus on the material realities relevant to systemic and structural understandings of racism, especially poverty. This was replaced by analysis of discourse and power. At the same time, critical race Theory invested heavily in identity politics and its supposed intellectual justification, standpoint theory—roughly, the idea that one’s identity and position in society influence how one comes to knowledge. These developments, together with the blurring of boundaries and dissolution of the individual in favor of group identity, reveal the dominance of postmodern thought in critical race Theory by the early 1990s.

These changes have been steadily eroding the barrier between scholarship and activism. It used to be considered a failure of teaching or scholarship to work from a particular ideological standpoint. The teacher or scholar was expected to set aside her own biases and beliefs in order to approach her subject as objectively as possible. Academics were incentivized to do so by knowing that other scholars could—and would—point out evidence of bias or motivated reasoning and counter it with evidence and argument. Teachers could consider their attempts at objectivity successful if their students did not know what their political or ideological positions were. This is not how Social Justice scholarship works or is applied to education. Teaching is now supposed to be a political act, and only one type of politics is acceptable—identity politics, as defined by Social Justice and Theory. In subjects ranging from gender studies to English literature, it is now perfectly acceptable to state a theoretical or ideological position and then use that lens to examine the material, without making any attempt to falsify one’s interpretation by including disconfirming evidence or alternative explanations. Now, scholars can openly declare themselves to be activists and teach activism in courses that require students to accept the ideological basis of Social Justice as true and produce work that supports it.38 One particularly infamous 2016 paper in Géneros: Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies even favorably likened women’s studies to HIV and Ebola, advocating that it spread its version of feminism like an immune-suppressing virus, using students-turned-activists as carriers.39

Standpoint theory can be understood by analogy to a kind of color blindness, in which the more privileged a person is, the fewer colors she can see. A straight white male—being triply dominant—might thus see only in shades of gray. A black person would be able to see shades of red; a woman would be able to see shades of green; and a LGBT person could see shades of blue; a black lesbian could see all three colors—in addition to the grayscale vision everyone has. Medina refers to this as a “kaleidoscopic consciousness” and “meta-lucidity.”25 Thus, having oppressed identities allows extra dimensions of sight. This gives the oppressed a richer, more accurate view of reality26—hence we should listen to and believe their accounts of it.

keeping with our old friend Cicero, here are the three points of comparison that I will discuss in this essay: the preferences for 1) Anglophone outlining of one’s arguments vs. European drifting through arguments more organically; 2) Anglophone clarity vs. European intellectuality; and, 3) Anglophone arguments through specific anecdotes that demonstrate ideas from a practical standpoint vs. European discussion of theories in the abstract.

The foundation of Machiavellian philosophy and its deepest insight is a sense of proportion. It corresponds to the Grotian apprehension of the moral complexity of politics… This is the special picture of political life one gets from reading Machiavelli himself and ‘irony’ is a category of philosophical Machiavellians. The word is not, I think, found in Machiavelli, but political irony is in fact what he very lovingly studied. Irony is a Machiavellian category while tragedy is a Grotian category. ‘Tragedy’ implies a standpoint outside the political drama, in which we experience, for example, admiration for Othello's nobility, pity for his weakness, and terror at Iago's wickedness… Now, it is difficult to adopt a tragic standpoint about politics, because ‘politics’ implies a situation in which we are still involved, where we can still act and affect the outcome, and anyway where we do not know the outcome because the drama is unfinished. To become fully tragic, politics have to be dead politics, that is, history: the tragedy of Athens, and of the League of Nations… Irony is, so to speak, the factual skeleton of tragedy, stripped of its moral and transcendental clothing. In literature it is the warping of a statement by its context; a character means one thing by a statement but we know the context and outcome that he does not, and see it has a different meaning. As Banquo rides away to be murdered, as Macbeth has arranged, Macbeth says to him genially: ‘Fail not our feast’—‘My lord, I will not.’ This is Sophoclean irony and there are other kinds, more complex. Irony can be seen in politics when statesmen pursue ends that recoil upon them, and turn into their opposites. Hugh R. Wilson, in Diplomat between Wars, says that the policy of the USA was of ‘overwhelming importance’ to the League of Nations in the Manchurian crisis, which makes ironic America's fear of, commitment and involvement: however little she wanted to be committed she was certainly involved, and by refusing to commit herself at that time she made her involvement in the struggle with Japan all the more certain. It is equally ironical that Britain and France went to war in 1939 to restore the balance of power in Europe by destroying Nazi Germany, embraced the Soviet alliance for that purpose, and ended with Europe as badly unbalanced by Stalin's power as it had been by Hitler's.

In The Irony of American History Reinhold Niebuhr sees ‘the necessity of using the threat of atomic destruction as an instrument for the preservation of peace … [as] a tragic element in our contemporary situation’. It is not tragic, but ironic only; it is not tragic, because we are involved in it, we cannot be detached about it. Tragic vision has a movement, or rhythm: first an initial standpoint outside the drama, detachment; then a self-projection into the drama, identification; and lastly, the discovery of the universal relevance of the drama, the recognition of having been told a truth about all mankind, including ourselves. This is the catharsis, the self-recognition, which brings a deeper understanding of the human predicament. We admire and pity Oedipus or Othello, or Lord Cecil and the League of Nations men because we identify ourselves with them and then recognize ourselves in them, but there is no such movement of tragic understanding in relation to our contemporary situation. The only emotion we can feel about the threat of atomic destruction as an instrument for peace is self-pity, and this is not a tragic emotion: it is notoriously the most unpurifying and impure of all emotions, the very opposite of self-recognition as part of universal humanity. Niebuhr, a Christian Machiavellian [see Appendix II], in his Irony of American History (1952) falsifies the relation of irony and tragedy and shows the Machiavellian's inability to understand the nature of tragedy.

Ronald Dworkin has recently argued that the central doctrine of modern liberalism is the thesis that questions about the good life for man or the ends of human life are to be regarded from the public standpoint as systematically unsettlable. On these individuals are free to agree or to disagree. The rules of morality and law hence are not to be derived from or justified in terms of some more fundamental conception of the good for man.

Central to these was and is the claim that it is only possible to understand the dominant moral culture of advanced modernity adequately from a standpoint external to that culture.

This obstacle which should be relentlessly combatted as a sign of narrow-minded party fanaticism and backward political culture, is reinforced for a journal like ours through the fact that in social sciences the stimulus to the posing of scientific problems is in actuality always given by practical "questions" Hence the very recognition of the existence of a scientific problem coincides personally, with the possession of specially oriented motives and values A Joumal which has come into existence under the Influence of a general interest in a concrete problem, will always include among its contributors persons who are personally Interested In these problems because certain concrete situations seem to be incompatible with, or seem to threaten. the realization of certain ideal values In which they belIeve. A bond of similar ideals will hold this circle of contrIbutors together and it will be the basis of a further recruitment. This in turn will tend to give the Journal, at least in its treatment of questions of practical social policy, a certain "character" which of course inevitably accompanies every collaboration of vigorously sensitive persons whose evaluative standpoint regarding the problems cannot be entirely expressed even In purely theoretical analysis; in the criticIsm of practIcal recommendations and measures it quite legitimately finds expression under the particular conditions above discussed.

Ever since the Prajnā-Pāramitā-Sūtras, or the scriptures on the perfection of wisdom, practitioners of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna have sought to cultivate the recognition that all phenomena are empty (shūnya): Everything that we could possibly point to, talk about, or even merely think of is a conceptual construct. Hence, according to the masters of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, nothing that is composite has any essence (sva-bhāva); everything is “without self” (nairātmya). In its most developed form—that of the Madhyamaka school founded by Nāgārjuna—this teaching came to mean that nothing is independently real. In his Madhyamaka-Kārikā (24.18), Nāgārjuna notes that it is the Buddha’s teaching of “dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda) that we call ‘emptiness’ (shūnyatā).” Everything arises in dependence on causes and conditions or what in modern ecology is known as the “web of life” or “interconnectedness.” When we think of a star, for instance, we must admit that it is not so much a stable thing but a very complex process of limited duration. The same is true of our body, the mind, and every other conceivable thing. But in order to navigate in the world of appearances, we artificially construct a cosmos populated by stable things, as if these had inherent existence. The problem with this is that we begin to take them very seriously—including our body-mind—and start reacting either by attracting or rejecting them. In the case of our body, we even go so far as to identify with it, and as a result we suffer all kinds of negative consequences, notably the fear of death. The cure, according to Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, is to cultivate the vision of emptiness, realizing of course that “emptiness” itself is a mental construct and therefore empty of inherent existence. Practitioners who forget this truth are apt to take shūnyatā itself as a definitive view (drishti) rather than as an antidote to all abstractions, which is the intended purpose. This kind of thinking has led to accusations of nihilism: that nothing whatsoever is real at any level and that nirvāna therefore is a completely meaningless and undesirable goal. In fact, both nihilism and realism are erroneous. Already the Buddha declined to speculate about the nature of nirvāna; he simply wanted to point a way to its realization. The Madhyamaka school simply developed this fundamental teaching along rigorous logical lines, focusing on the art of refutation of all possible metaphysical standpoints. But the language of emptiness is not meant to be merely a game of logic. Its real function is to shatter the conceptual mind and guide it to the truth about phenomena. For this emptiness must not only be understood intellectually but experienced through the cultivation of wisdom and compassion by means of the ten stages of the bodhisattva path.

Ever since the Prajnā-Pāramitā-Sūtras, or the scriptures on the perfection of wisdom, practitioners of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna have sought to cultivate the recognition that all phenomena are empty (shūnya): Everything that we could possibly point to, talk about, or even merely think of is a conceptual construct. Hence, according to the masters of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, nothing that is composite has any essence (sva-bhāva); everything is “without self” (nairātmya). In its most developed form—that of the Madhyamaka school founded by Nāgārjuna—this teaching came to mean that nothing is independently real. In his Madhyamaka-Kārikā (24.18), Nāgārjuna notes that it is the Buddha’s teaching of “dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda) that we call ‘emptiness’ (shūnyatā).” Everything arises in dependence on causes and conditions or what in modern ecology is known as the “web of life” or “interconnectedness.” When we think of a star, for instance, we must admit that it is not so much a stable thing but a very complex process of limited duration. The same is true of our body, the mind, and every other conceivable thing. But in order to navigate in the world of appearances, we artificially construct a cosmos populated by stable things, as if these had inherent existence. The problem with this is that we begin to take them very seriously—including our body-mind—and start reacting either by attracting or rejecting them. In the case of our body, we even go so far as to identify with it, and as a result we suffer all kinds of negative consequences, notably the fear of death. The cure, according to Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, is to cultivate the vision of emptiness, realizing of course that “emptiness” itself is a mental construct and therefore empty of inherent existence. Practitioners who forget this truth are apt to take shūnyatā itself as a definitive view (drishti) rather than as an antidote to all abstractions, which is the intended purpose. This kind of thinking has led to accusations of nihilism: that nothing whatsoever is real at any level and that nirvāna therefore is a completely meaningless and undesirable goal. In fact, both nihilism and realism are erroneous. Already the Buddha declined to speculate about the nature of nirvāna; he simply wanted to point a way to its realization. The Madhyamaka school simply developed this fundamental teaching along rigorous logical lines, focusing on the art of refutation of all possible metaphysical standpoints. But the language of emptiness is not meant to be merely a game of logic. Its real function is to shatter the conceptual mind and guide it to the truth about phenomena. For this emptiness must not only be understood intellectually but experienced through the cultivation of wisdom and compassion by means of the ten stages of the bodhisattva path. The inherent selflessness or emptiness of beings notwithstanding, a bodhisattva is altruistically dedicated to their liberation.

Mises and Hayek Beginning with Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, the links between liberalism and the Austrian School become intense and pervasive, since these two scholars were themselves at once the outstanding Austrian economists and the most distinguished liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. The American academic world, however, deemed none of this sufficient for them to be accorded the kind of positions to which they were clearly entitled.50 They, and in particular Mises, were also responsible to a greater degree than is generally appreciated for the upsurge of the free-market philosophy in the second half of the century.51 But since the views of the two great men are so often amalgamated, it should be emphasized that not only did they differ to an extent on economic theory (Salerno 1993; see also Kirzner 1992c: 119–36), but, more pertinently to the theme of this essay, they exhibited a sharp distinction in the degree of their liberalism. What follows refers to Hayek’s political attitudes, not to his contributions to economic science. These were highly significant and valuable in the earlier part of his career, as he together with Mises built the theoretical foundations of the modern Austrian school.52 While Mises was a staunch advocate of the laissez-faire market economy (Mises 1978a; Rothbard 1988: 40; Hoppe 1993; Klein 1999), Hayek was always more open to what he saw as the useful possibilities of state action. He had been a student of Wieser’s, and, as he conceded, he was “attracted to him . . . because unlike most of the other members of the Austrian School [Wieser] had a good deal of sympathy with [the] mild Fabian Socialism to which I was inclined as a young man. He in fact prided himself that his theory of marginal utility had provided the basis of progressive taxation . . .” (Hayek 1983: 17). Early in his career, Hayek stated that the lessons of economics will create a presumption against state interference, adding: However, this by no means does away with the positive part of the economist’s task, the delimitation of the field within which collective action is not only unobjectionable but actually a useful means of obtaining the desired ends. . .the classical writers very much neglected the positive part of the task and thereby allowed the impression to gain ground that laissez-faire was their ultimate and only conclusion . . . (1933: 133–34) This remained Hayek’s standpoint throughout his long and richly productive scholarly life. It is regrettable, but typical, that a great many confused commentators continue to characterize him as a advocate of laissez-faire.53 In fact, he

In short, believers in the standpoint that the entire universe runs like a perfect clock dismiss the notion that anything is fundamentally random.

standpoint epistemology’. This is the idea that some forms of knowledge are socially situated, so that only if you are in a particular social situation are you able to easily acquire that kind of knowledge. The term originally comes from Marxism and the idea that oppressed people can have insight into two perspectives or ‘standpoints’ at once – their own and their oppressors’ – whereas oppressors can have only one perspective (their own). Since the workers are subject to bourgeois rules and a bourgeois worldview, they get insight into the bourgeoisie’s standpoint. Additionally, though, workers have intimate knowledge of their own socially situated standpoint, which the bourgeoisie lacks. This idea has been adopted by several social justice movements, including feminism, critical race theory and trans activism.

The Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism came to fruition during this extremely violent, war-ridden age, hence, its naturally sharp and vigorous spirit. Its special emphasis on independence from words came from its denial of the empty ideas and words cherished by the intelligentsia. And its insistence on thorough insight into one’s original self-nature alludes to its protest against the intellectuals who spent their time repeating and criticizing second and third-hand theories without possessing any philosophy of their own formulation. At any rate, it may be safely said that the characteristic of the Rinzai Sect lies in its emphasis on the spontaneous operation of the spirit of Zen, arising from the standpoint of the awakened Self. Regarding the Soto sect, it is stated in Ninden Ganmoku:

Especially in its antithesis to Anabaptism Calvinism exhibits itself in bold relief. For Anabaptism adopted the opposite method, and in its effort to evade the world it confirmed the monastic starting-point, generalizing and making it a rule for all believers. It was not from Calvinism, but from this anabaptistic principle, that Akosmism had its rise among so many Protestants in Western Europe. In fact, Anabaptism adopted the Romish theory, with this difference : that it placed the kingdom of God in the room of the Church, and abandoned the distinction between the two moral standards, one for the clergy and the other for the laity. For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: (1) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions ; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers—with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God—was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam. Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.

Especially in its antithesis to Anabaptism Calvinism exhibits itself in bold relief. For Anabaptism adopted the opposite method, and in its effort to evade the world it confirmed the monastic starting-point, generalizing and making it a rule for all believers. It was not from Calvinism, but from this anabaptistic principle, that Akosmism had its rise among so many Protestants in Western Europe. In fact, Anabaptism adopted the Romish theory, with this difference : that it placed the kingdom of God in the room of the Church, and abandoned the distinction between the two moral standards, one for the clergy and the other for the laity. For the rest the Anabaptist's standpoint was: (1) that the unbaptized world was under the curse, for which reason he withdrew from all civil institutions ; and (2) that the circle of baptized believers—with Rome the Church, but with him the kingdom of God—was in duty bound to take all civil life under its guardianship and to remodel it; and so John of Leyden violently established his shameless power at Munster as King of the New Zion, and his devotees ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam. Hence, on the same grounds on which Calvinism rejected Rome's theory concerning the world, it rejected the theory of the Anabaptist, and proclaimed that the Church must withdraw again within its spiritual domain, and that in the world we should realize the potencies of God's common grace.

In any event, if upon recounting your eerie encounter you get caught up in the spirit of the story and say you saw an ethereal being, then you may convince not just your audience, but yourself. One notable finding of modern psychology is how systematically misleading memory is. People often remember events wrongly from the get-go, and even when they don’t, their memory can later be steered toward falsehood. In particular, the act of reporting false details can cement them firmly in mind. You don’t just recount what you remember; you remember what you recount. (Football star O. J. Simpson’s former agent was sure Simpson had killed his ex-wife and also sure that Simpson believed he didn’t.) This built-in fallibility makes sense from a Darwinian standpoint, allowing people to bend the truth self-servingly with an air of great and growing conviction. And, clearly, bent truths of a religious sort could be self-serving. If you were a close friend or relative of the deceased, then the idea that his powerful spirit is afoot may incline people to treat you nicely, lest they invite his wrath. Another gem from social psychology: publicly espousing something not only helps convince you of its truth; it shapes your future perception, inclining you to see evidence supporting it but not evidence against it. So if you speculate that the strange, shadowy creature was the disgruntled spirit of the deceased, you’ll likely find corroboration. You may notice that one of his enemies fell ill only a week after your sighting, while forgetting that one of his friends fell ill a few days earlier. If you’re a person of high status, all of this will carry particular weight, as such people are accorded unusual (and often undue) credibility. If, in a hunter-gatherer band of thirty people, someone widely esteemed claims to have seen something strange—and has a theory about what it was—twenty people may be convinced right off the bat. Then the aforementioned tendency of people to conform to peer opinion could quickly yield unanimity.

Theists of course are deeply critical of those aspects of Marxism that issue in Marxist atheism. And theists of different standpoints have leveled a variety of particular criticisms against particular Marxist theses. Nonetheless they have had to recognize that Marxism is a theory or a set of theories with the same scope as their own and that in responding to it they are responding to a theoretical atheism that is in some ways intellectually more congenial than the practical atheism of contemporary American universities. For by either eliminating mention of God from the curriculum altogether (departments of religious studies concern themselves with various types of belief in God, not with God), or by restricting reference to God to departments of theology, such universities render their secular curriculum Godless. And this Godlessness is, as I already noted, not just a matter of the subtraction of God from the range of objects studied, but also and quite as much the absence of any integrated and overall view of things.

A religious theory of society necessarily regards with suspicion all doctrines which claim a large space for the unfettered play of economic self-interest. To the latter the end of activity is the satisfaction of desires, to the former the felicity of man consists in the discharge of obligations imposed by God. Viewing the social order as the imperfect reflection of a divine plan, it naturally attaches a high values to the arts by which nature is harnessed to the service of mankind. But, more concerned with ends than with means, it regards temporal goods as at best instrumental to a spiritual purpose, and its standpoint is that of Bacon, when he spoke of the progress of knowledge as being sought for ‘the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.

He is not understood. People laugh at him when he is harmless; they try to destroy him when he is strong. If he fails to comprehend the infinity into which his thoughts and actions reach, he is doomed to wreak his own ruin. Everything was seething and whirling in me when I read and understood Peer Gynt and when I met and comprehended Freud. I was ostensibly like Peer Gynt. I felt his fate to be the most likely outcome if one ventured to tear oneself loose from the closed ranks of acknowledged science and traditional thinking. If Freud’s theory of the unconscious was correct—and I had no doubt that it was—then the inner psychic infinity had been grasped. One became an infinitesimal speck in the flux of one’s own experiences. I felt all this in a nebulous way—not at all “scientifically.” Viewed from the standpoint of unarmored life, scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena. Hence, it serves the purpose of a psychic protection. There is little danger

The bourgeois standpoint has to stop in theory where it has to stop in social practice — as long as it does not want to cease being a 'bourgeois' standpoint altogether, in other words supersede itself.

Dr. Aditi told me that when you’re stressed, you not only feel like you’re in survival mode, but from a neurological standpoint, your brain actually is in survival mode. Your goals. . . your dreams. . . your best self. . . your ability to be patient and nonreactive. . . it all goes right out the window. Which is why you must solve this problem and stop allowing other people to create unnecessary stress in your life. There’s too much at stake. You deserve to live a good life, but you’ll never be able to if you are always in survival mode. You’ll never get that project done this weekend if you keep procrastinating because of stress.