Stop Being Average Quotes

Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.

...What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day... If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased... I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do... I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. ...Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now. [Columbian Magazine interview]

When black folk say “Black Lives Matter,” they are in search of simple recognition. That they are decent human beings, that they aren’t likely to commit crimes, that they’re reasonably smart. That they’re no more evil than the next person, that they’re willing to work hard to get ahead, that they love their kids and want them to do better than they did. That they are loving and kind and compassionate. And that they should be treated with the same respect that the average, nondescript, unexceptional white male routinely receives without fanfare or the expectation of

A part of her wanted to stop pushing herself, stop feeling compelled to rise to the occasion of being her best self. She wanted to figure out how to be her average self without feeling like a loser.

when it comes to empathy and compassion, rich people tend to suck. This has been explored at length in a series of studies by Dacher Keltner of UC Berkeley. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, on the average, the wealthier people are, the less empathy they report for people in distress and the less compassionately they act. Moreover, wealthier people are less adept at recognizing other people’s emotions and in experimental settings are greedier and more likely to cheat or steal. Two of the findings were picked up by the media as irresistible: (a) wealthier people (as assessed by the cost of the car they were driving) are less likely than poor people to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks; (b) suppose there’s a bowl of candy in the lab; invite test subjects, after they finish doing some task, to grab some candy on the way out, telling them that whatever’s left over will be given to some kids—the wealthier take more candy.25 So do miserable, greedy, unempathic people become wealthy, or does being wealthy increase the odds of a person’s becoming that way? As a cool manipulation, Keltner primed subjects to focus either on their socioeconomic success (by asking them to compare themselves with people less well off than them) or on the opposite. Make people feel wealthy, and they take more candy from children.

Stop being average.

You know what I think?” Touching him feels so good, so strangely uncomplicated, like he’s the exception to every rule. “What?” “I think you love your job,” he says softly. “I think you work that hard because you care ten times more than the average person.” “About work,” I say. “About everything.” His arms tighten around me. “Your sister. Your clients. Their books. You don’t do anything you’re not going to do one hundred percent. You don’t start anything you can’t finish. “You’re not the person who buys the stationary bike as part of a New Year’s resolution, then uses it as a coatrack for three years. You’re not the kind of woman who only works hard when it feels good, or only shows up when it’s convenient. If someone insults one of your clients, those fancy kid gloves of yours come off, and you carry your own pen at all times, because if you’re going to have to write anything, it might as well look good. You read the last page of books first—don’t make that face, Stephens.” He cracks a smile in one corner of his mouth. “I’ve seen you—even when you’re shelving, you sometimes check the last page, like you’re constantly looking for all the information, trying to make the absolute best decisions.” “And by you’ve seen me,” I say, “you mean you’ve watched me.” “Of course I fucking do,” he says in a low, rough voice. “I can’t stop. I’m always aware of where you are, even if I don’t look, but it’s impossible not to. I want to see your face get stern when you’re emailing a client’s editor, being a hard-ass, and I want to see your legs when you’re so excited about something you just read that you can’t stop crossing and uncrossing them. And when someone pisses you off, you get these red splotches.” His fingers brush my throat. “Right here.” “You’re a fighter,” he says. “When you care about something, you won’t let anything fucking touch it. I’ve never met anyone who cares as much as you do. Do you know what most people would give to have someone like that in their life?” His eyes are dark, probing, his heartbeat fast. “Do you know how fucking lucky anyone you care about is? You know . . .

I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend with. Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive what you could call active encouragement. His father was dead against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the subject. My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She was somewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day like that. So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name. People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr. Jefferson's the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim's shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse. So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his mother almost to tears. She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea - where the connection came in, she could not explain). Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden, about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the machine down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.

Stop being an average mindset.

At hearing the news, he unsuccessfully tried to stop himself from being happy. He wondered how it happened that his average grades and middling job experience were somehow deemed weightier than genuine life skills--Renato's naked ambition, Angela's people skills, Vincent's quick thinking, Imaculada's grit--only because he articulated them better, just because he had the English nouns and verbs, the necessary tongue and lip placements, to say, 'I have made these myself. Listen.

In 90% of cases, you can start with one of the two most effective ways to open a speech: ask a question or start with a story. Our brain doesn’t remember what we hear. It remembers only what we “see” or imagine while we listen. You can remember stories. Everything else is quickly forgotten. Smell is the most powerful sense out of 4 to immerse audience members into a scene. Every sentence either helps to drive your point home, or it detracts from clarity. There is no middle point. If you don’t have a foundational phrase in your speech, it means that your message is not clear enough to you, and if it’s not clear to you, there is no way it will be clear to your audience. Share your failures first. Show your audience members that you are not any better, smarter or more talented than they are. You are not an actor, you are a speaker. The main skill of an actor is to play a role; to be someone else. Your main skill as a speaker is to be yourself. People will forgive you for anything except for being boring. Speaking without passion is boring. If you are not excited about what you are talking about, how can you expect your audience to be excited? Never hide behind a lectern or a table. Your audience needs to see 100% of your body. Speak slowly and people will consider you to be a thoughtful and clever person. Leaders don’t talk much, but each word holds a lot of meaning and value. You always speak to only one person. Have a conversation directly with one person, look him or her in the eye. After you have logically completed one idea, which usually is 10-20 seconds, scan the audience and then stop your eyes on another person. Repeat this process again. Cover the entire room with eye contact. When you scan the audience and pick people for eye contact, pick positive people more often. When you pause, your audience thinks about your message and reflects. Pausing builds an audiences’ confidence. If you don’t pause, your audience doesn’t have time to digest what you've told them and hence, they will not remember a word of what you've said. Pause before and after you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. After you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. Speakers use filler words when they don’t know what to say, but they feel uncomfortable with silence. Have you ever seen a speaker who went on stage with a piece of paper and notes? Have you ever been one of these speakers? When people see you with paper in your hands, they instantly think, “This speaker is not sincere. He has a script and will talk according to the script.” The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten. Bad speakers create a 10 minutes speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Great speakers create a 5 minute speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Explain your ideas in a simple manner, so that the average 12-year-old child can understand the concept. Good speakers and experts can always explain the most complex ideas with very simple words. Stories evoke emotions. Factual information conveys logic. Emotions are far more important in a speech than logic. If you're considering whether to use statistics or a story, use a story. PowerPoint is for pictures not for words. Use as few words on the slide as possible. Never learn your speech word for word. Just rehearse it enough times to internalize the flow. If you watch a video of your speech, you can triple the pace of your development as a speaker. Make videos a habit. Meaningless words and clichés neither convey value nor information. Avoid them. Never apologize on stage. If people need to put in a lot of effort to understand you they simply won’t listen. On the other hand if you use very simple language you will connect with the audience and your speech will be remembered.

Rearview Mirror Syndrome One of the most crippling causes of mediocrity in life is a condition I call Rearview Mirror Syndrome (RMS). Our subconscious minds are equipped with a self-limiting rearview mirror, through which we continuously relive and recreate our past. We mistakenly believe that who we were is who we are, thus limiting our true potential in the present, based on the limitations of our past.   As a result, we filter every choice we make—from what time we will wake up in the morning to which goals we will set to what we allow ourselves to consider possible for our lives—through the limitations of our past experiences. We want to create a better life, but sometimes we don’t know how to see it any other way than how it’s always been.   Research shows that on any given day, the average person thinks somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 thoughts. The problem is that ninety-five percent of our thoughts are the same as the ones we thought the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. It’s no wonder most people go through life, day after day, month after month, year after year, and never change the quality of their lives.   Like old, worn baggage, we carry stress, fear, and worry from yesterday with us into today. When presented with opportunities, we quickly check our rearview mirror to assess our past capabilities. “No, I’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve never achieved at that level. In fact, I’ve failed, time and time again.”   When presented with adversity, we go back to our trusty rearview mirror for guidance on how to respond. “Yep, just my luck. This crap always happens to me. I’m just going to give up; that’s what I’ve always done when things get too difficult.”   If you are to move beyond your past and transcend your limitations, you must stop living out of your rearview mirror and start imagining a life of limitless possibilities. Accept the paradigm:  my past does not equal my future. Talk to yourself in a way that inspires confidence that not only is anything possible, but that you are capable and committed to making it so. It’s not even necessary to believe it at first. In fact, you probably won’t believe it. You might find it uncomfortable and that you resist doing it. That’s okay. Repeat it to yourself anyway, and your subconscious mind will begin to absorb the positive self-affirmations. (More on how to do this in Chapter 6:  The Life S.A.V.E.R.S.)   Don’t place unnecessary limitations on what you want for your life. Think bigger than you’ve allowed yourself to think up until this point. Get clear on what you truly want, condition yourself to the belief that it’s possible by focusing on and affirming it every day, and then consistently move in the direction of your vision until it becomes your reality. There is nothing to fear, because you cannot fail—only learn, grow, and become better than you’ve ever been before.   Always remember that where you are is a result of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be, from this moment on.

Many introverts are also “highly sensitive,” which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you’re more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience. When you were a child you were probably called “shy,” and to this day feel nervous when you’re being evaluated, for example when giving a speech or on a first date. Later we’ll examine why this seemingly unrelated

For the guard with the scar over her heart: I’ve been watching you. You’re not like the other guards — the bowing, scraping, mindlessly loyal lizards who live for your queen. You have your own thoughts, don’t you? You’re smarter than the average SandWing. And I think I know your secret. Let’s talk about it. Third cell down, the one with two NightWings in it. I’m the one who doesn’t snore. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN DISCUSSING ANYTHING WITH A NIGHTWING PRISONER. WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO LET YOU HAVE PAPER AND INK? You should be interested. You’re going to need allies for what you’re planning … and when I get out of here, I’m going to be a very useful ally indeed. AMUSING ASSUMPTIONS. MY QUEEN BELIEVES YOU’RE GOING TO BE IN HERE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME. True … but she also believes she’s going to be queen for a long, long time … doesn’t she. An interesting silence after my last note. Perhaps it would reassure you to know I set your notes on fire as soon as I’ve read them. You can tell me anything, my new, venomous-tailed friend. Believe me, Night-Wings are exceptionally skilled at keeping secrets. WE ARE NOT FRIENDS. I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU, OTHER THAN WHAT IT SAYS IN YOUR PRISONER FILE. FIERCETEETH: TRAITOR. KIDNAPPER. RINGLEADER OF ASSASSINATION PLOT. TO BE HELD INDEFINITELY WITH FELLOW TRAITOR STRONGWINGS, ON BEHALF OF THE NIGHTWING QUEEN. OH, YES, CERTAINLY SOUNDS LIKE A DRAGON ANYONE CAN TRUST. She’s not my queen. You can’t be a traitor to someone who shouldn’t be ruling over you in the first place. Which might be a thought you’ve had lately yourself, isn’t it? I know some things about you, even without a file. Saguaro: Prison guard. Schemer. Connected to great secret plans. We’re not so different, you and I. Particularly when it comes to trustworthiness. Just think, if my alleged “assassination plot” had worked, the NightWings would have a different queen right now. Perhaps it would even be me. Well, if at first you don’t succeed … I could tell you my story, if you get me more paper to write on. Or you could stop by one midnight and listen to it instead. But I’ve noticed you don’t like spending too much time in the dungeon. Is it the tip-tap of little scorpion claws scrabbling everywhere? The stench rising from the holes in the floor? The gibbering mad SandWing a few cages down who never shuts up, all night long? (What is her story? Has she really been here since the rule of Queen Oasis?) Or is it that you can too easily picture yourself behind these bars … and you know how close you are to joining us? ALL RIGHT, NIGHTWING, HERE’S A BLANK SCROLL. GO AHEAD AND TRY TO CONVINCE ME THAT YOU’RE A DRAGON WHO EVEN DESERVES TO LIVE, LET ALONE ONE I SHOULD WASTE MY TIME ON. I DO ENJOY BEING AMUSED.

Many introverts are also “highly sensitive,” which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you’re more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience. When you were a child you were probably called “shy,” and to this day feel nervous when you’re being evaluated, for example when giving a speech or on a first date. Later we’ll examine why this seemingly unrelated collection of attributes tends to belong to the same person and why this person is often introverted. (No one knows exactly how many introverts are highly sensitive, but we know that 70 percent of sensitives are introverts, and the other 30 percent tend to report needing a lot of “down time.”)

We stop valuing ourselves enough when we communicate. Our true expe­riences are completely taciturn. They could not be communicated even if they wanted to be. This is because the right words for them do not exist. The things we have words for are also the things we have already left behind. There is a grain of contempt in all speech. Language, it seems, was invented only for average, mediocre, communicable things. People vulgarize themselves when they speak a language.

I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ [...] ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, for the fifty years following the Great Depression, the tax rate on the highest income bracket averaged 80 percent, redistributing much of the richest Americans’ wealth. Beginning in the 1980s with the advent of politicians like Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and with growth increasingly seen as the be-all and end-all of economics, far less was asked of the wealthy. The comparable tax figure for 2020 was 37 percent.

this is the defining event of my life and you're treating it like it's normal. like it's nothing." He leaned back, looking up at the sk. "Well, maybe it should stop being the defining event. There's a whole lot more to an average life than something that happened before you were a year old." I knew that he was right, but it was scary. I looked away because I didn't want him to see how lonely I'd been. It was disorienting to think everything that had defined me for so long was only circumstantial.

For a long time, I’ve known that the key to getting started down the path of being remarkable in anything is to simply act with the intention of being remarkable. “If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing. “Yet

So dominant is soy as industrial animal feed that the average person in the UK or Europe consumes approximately 61kg of soy per year, largely in the form of animal products such as chicken, pork, salmon, cheese, milk and eggs.36 Only 20–30 per cent of imported soy is ‘certified sustainable’ (and we have already discussed how little that means). So, if you live in the UK, there is a tennis court of land producing soy in the tropics just for you, and most of it comes from places like Brazil and Argentina where ecosystems that affect global climate are being destroyed.**

How many of us are willing to give up anything—let alone everything? Most of us will lash out bitterly if we are asked to make any sacrifice at all, any adjustment to our lives, any change to our lifestyles. We will shriek in horror if anyone suggests, say, that we give up watching certain television shows or listening to certain music. We will explode in fury if anyone questions whether a Christian ought to watch pornography, or dress provocatively, or use profanity. We will laugh and mock and practically spit at any critic who dares to look at something we do, something we enjoy, something that gives us pleasure, and question whether it is proper. Most of us, if we are being perfectly honest, cannot think of one thing—one measly thing—that we greatly enjoy and have the means to do yet have stopped doing because we know it is inconsistent with our faith. I do not believe that I exaggerate when I say that the average American Christian has never given up one single thing for Christ.

My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes. ‘’Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again. ‘’I was getting a little bored in here.

In The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo, citing decades of research, details all of the ways that ordinary, average individuals—whether they be soldiers in Guatemala, doctors in Nazi Germany, Hutus in Rwanda—can be stripped of their values, their morality, their souls. After elaborating on the variables that contribute to this process—isolation, drug use, denying people identities—he declares that the most important variable, far and away more important than the others, is the fear of being excluded from the in-group. Manipulating this fear, he asserts, is the most effective way people are transformed from ordinary human beings into human beings capable of evil. We tend to associate the desire for acceptance by the in-group with high school, but according to Zimbardo, this need does not stop at adolescence but continues through adulthood. He cites people’s willingness to suffer painful and or humiliating initiation rites in return for acceptance in fraternities, cults, social clubs, or the military. When the desire to be included is coupled with the terror of being excluded, Zimbardo writes that it can cripple initiative, negate personal autonomy, and lead people to do virtually anything to avoid rejection. “Authorities can command total obedience not through punishment or rewards but by means of the double-edged weapon: the lure of acceptance coupled with the threat of rejection.

Can't you just let it go? Move on?" His face darkened. His eyes glared in response and he was silent a long time while his jaw worked over a toothpick. She'd used the same line that the prophet and his representatives had been using for years. Even if these things did happen, there is no point in being bitter. You should forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones. Kind of galling, considering the insistence upon forgiveness was being made by the people who had done the hurting and done nothing to make up for it. But then, that was the standard 'blame the victim' abuser mentally, and to be expected. Gideon seemed to work through this slap in the face and let it slide. He said, "For a while I thought maybe, you know, if I could talk to the people responsible. If I could show them how difficult life has been because of them, that maybe they would care. I don't know. I thought maybe if they apologized, it would be so much easier to forget this shit. You know? To do what they say and 'let it go'. But nobody will take any personal responsibility. My own parents have nothing to offer but a bunch of whiny excuses. They try to convince me that my life wasn't as bad as I remember it." "Fuck that," he said, "They weren't even there. They don't even know what went on with me. I just..." He paused and pulled his fingers through his hair. "Christ," he said. He paused again, eyes to the sky, and then back to her. "Even the people who never personally raised a hand against me still propped up the regime that made it happen. They stood by and allowed it. Played a part. All of them. Every single one was a participant. Either directly or by looking away. Institutionally, doctrinally, they abused us. Sent us into the streets to beg, denied us an education, had us beaten, starved, exorcised, and separated from our parents. They broke up our families, gave our bodies to perverts, and stole our future. And then they turn around and say we're supposed to just forget it happened and move on from it. If instead we bring up the past, then they'll call us liars. Say we're exaggerating or making it up completely. Why the hell would be make any of this shit up? What's the point in that? To make our lives seem worse than they were? Not that I would, but do you have any idea how much exaggeration it would take for the average person to even begin to grasp how fucking miserable it was? And then, if they ever do admit to any of it, they say that 'mistakes were made'. " "Mistakes." he said. He was leaning forward again, punctuating the air with his finger. "Michael, they commit crimes against children. You know, those things people in society go to jail for when they're caught. And then to the public they do what they always do. Deny. Deny. Deny. And we're left more raped than ever. Victimized first by what they did, and again by their refusal to admit that it happened. They paint us as bitter apostates and liars to a world that not only doesn't give a shit, but also couldn't possibly understand even if it did." "I do," Munroe said. And Gideon stopped.

What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Talk to me.’ ‘I …’ I looked down. I didn’t want her to see me. But Rooney was looking at me, eyebrows furrowed, so many thoughts churning behind her eyes, and it was that look that made me start spilling everything out. ‘I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ ‘B-but … that’s not how the world works, people always put romance over friendships –’ ‘Says who?’ Rooney spluttered, smacking her hand on the ground in front of us. ‘The heteronormative rulebook? Fuck that, Georgia. Fuck that.’ She stood up, flailing her arms and pacing as she spoke. ‘I know you’ve been trying to help me with Pip,’ she began, ‘and I appreciate that, Georgia, I really do. I like her and I think she likes me and we like being around each other and, yep, I’m just gonna say it – I think we really, really want to have sex with each other.’ I just stared at her, my cheeks tear-stained, having no idea where this was going. ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

To summarize my ORB Strategy: After I build my watchlist in the morning, I closely monitor the shortlisted stocks in the first five minutes after the Open. I identify their opening range and their price action. How many shares are being traded? Is the stock jumping up and down or does it have a directional upward or downward movement? Is it high volume with large orders only, or are there many orders going through? I prefer stocks that have high volume, but also with numerous different orders being traded. If the stock has traded 1 million shares, but those shares were only ten orders of 100,000 shares each, it is not a liquid stock to trade. Volume alone does not show the liquidity; the number of orders being sent to the exchange is as important. The opening range must be significantly smaller than the stock’s Average True Range (ATR). I have ATR as a column in my Trade Ideas scanner. After the close of the first five minutes of trading, the stock may continue to be traded in that opening range in the next five minutes. But, if I see the stock is breaking the opening range, I enter the trade according to the direction of the breakout: long for an upward breakout and short for a downward move. My stop loss is a close below VWAP for the long positions and a break above VWAP for the short positions. My profit target is the next important technical level, such as: (1) important intraday daily levels that I identify in the pre-market, (2) moving averages on a daily chart, and/or (3) previous day close. If there was no obvious technical level for the exit and profit target, I exit when a stock shows signs of weakness (if I am long) or strength (if I am short). For example, if the price makes a new 5-minute low, that means weakness, and I consider selling my position if I am long. If I am short and the stock makes a new 5-minute high, then it could be a sign of strength and I consider covering my short position. My strategy above was for a 5-minute ORB, but the same process will also work well for 15-minute or 30-minute ORBs.

Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it;... And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity.

Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it;... And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity.

It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument. But it doesn’t! I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend with. Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive what you could call active encouragement. His father was dead against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the subject. My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She was somewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day like that. So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name. People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr. Jefferson’s the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim’s shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse. So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his mother almost to tears. She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea — where the connection came in, she could not explain). Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden, about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the machine down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad. There is, it must be confessed, something very sad about the early efforts of an amateur in bagpipes.

I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ [...] ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

When black folk say “Black Lives Matter,” they are in search of simple recognition. That they are decent human beings, that they aren’t likely to commit crimes, that they’re reasonably smart. That they’re no more evil than the next person, that they’re willing to work hard to get ahead, that they love their kids and want them to do better than they did. That they are loving and kind and compassionate. And that they should be treated with the same respect that the average, nondescript, unexceptional white male routinely receives without fanfare or the expectation of gratitude in return.

an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave off death with $12,000-a-month chemotherapy, $4,000-a-day intensive care, $7,000-an-hour surgery. But, ultimately, death comes, and few are good at knowing when to stop.

When he got out of the car to do his business, my mother stared straight ahead. But I turned to watch. There was always something wild and charismatically uncaring about my father’s demeanor in these moments, some mysterious abandonment of his frowning and cogitative state that already meant a lot to me, even though at that age I understood almost nothing about him. Paulie had long ago stopped whispering 'perv' to me for observing him as he relieved himself. She of course, kept her head n her novels. I remember that it was cold that day, and windy but that the sky had been cut from the crackling blue gem field of a late midwestern April. Outside the car, as other families sped past my father stepped to the leeward side of the open door then leaning back from the waist and at the same time forward the ankles. His penis poked out from his zipper for this part, Bernie always stood up at the rear window. My father paused fo a moment rocking slightly while a few indistinct words played on his lips. Then just before his stream stared he tiled back his head as if there were a code written in the sky that allowed the event to begin. This was the moment I waited for, the movement seemed to be a marker of his own private devotion as though despite his unshakable atheism and despite his sour, entirely analytic approach to every affair of life, he nonetheless felt the need to acknowledge the heavens in the regard to this particular function of the body. I don't know perhaps I sensed that he simply enjoyed it in a deep way that I did. It was possible I already recognized that the eye narrowing depth of his physical delight in that moment was relative to that paucity of other delights in his life. But in any case the prayerful uplifting of his cranium always seemed to democratize him for me, to make him for a few minutes at least, a regular man. Bernie let out a bark. ‘’Is he done?’’ asked my mother. I opened my window. ‘’Almost.’’ In fact he was still in the midst. My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes. ‘’Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again. ‘’I was getting a little bored in here.

Be Different Be unique. Be different. Stop following the crowd. Listen for the sound of that distant drum. The successful person and the average person approach life differently. The average person, it seems to me, likes to take the easy way out. It’s almost as if the average person wants to get through work just to rush home to do very little, or nothing at all. Television

stop and ponder.  Just how much of our lives did the average person spend in some form of confrontation with something or someone over what they thought was right either mentally or emotionally?  And most of it, she knew, being an anthropologist, were the same arguments.  The same worries and bickering that thousands of generations had before us.  The same fears.  The same controversies.  The same disagreements.  In many cases humans had fought over the very same resources. A perpetual argument.  An endless cycle running repeatedly in a world that had not and would not change unless something interrupted the pattern.  Something so meaningful and profound that it would make every person stop and reassess what the world meant to them and what life meant to them.  To make them remember that our individual flashes in time were precious, never to repeat.  Never to remember what we had done or learned even between the bickering. Because this was it. Once we were gone, our lessons and memories were lost forever.

The contemptuous person is likely to experience feelings of low self-esteem, inadequacy, and shame. In a March 2019 New York Times opinion piece entitled Our Culture of Contempt, Arthur C. Brooks writes: “political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the civil war. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organized their social lives and their news exposure along with ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints.” What's our problem? A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on motive attribution asymmetry, the assumption that your ideology is based in love while your opponent’s is based in hate suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average republican and the average democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it's driven by a benevolence while the other side is evil and motivated by hatred, and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise. People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse – contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust, and not just contempt for other people's ideas but also for other people. In the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.” Brooks goes on to say contempt makes political compromise and progress impossible. It also makes us unhappy as people. According to the American Psychological Association, “the feelings of rejection so often experienced after being treated with contempt increases anxiety, depression, and sadness. It also damages the contemptuous person by stimulating two stress hormones -- cortisol and adrenaline -- in ways both public and personal. Contempt causes us deep harm.

Many pediatricians and other physicians believe that breastmilk causes higher levels of bilirubin in the first few days of life. Not true. But the reason that some breastfed babies are more jaundiced is that they are not breastfeeding well and are not getting enough breastmilk. That means the baby will also not have substantial enough bowel movements to remove the bilirubin in his intestine and prevent it from being absorbed back into the body. The answer is not to give formula, but to help the mother with the latching on of the baby and making sure he is breastfeeding well (see how this is done earlier in the chapter). Then he will poop more (because colostrum is a laxative) and the bilirubin will decrease. In most cases no supplementation is needed; if it does become necessary it should be given by a lactation aid at the breast, in this order of preference: 1. The mother’s own expressed breastmilk. 2. Banked breastmilk. 3. The mother’s own expressed breastmilk with added 5% glucose so that there is enough volume. 4. Formula. This should be used only if we cannot get the baby breastfeeding well and the first choices do not work. There are other causes of higher-than-average bilirubin levels in the first few days, but none require the mother to stop breastfeeding. Phototherapy

Indeed, today there is an enormous danger that the Left has lost the ability to offer a genuinely useful critique of America’s emerging role and has degenerated into what is dangerously close to a full-fledged fantasy ideology. The danger here is the danger that arises with any criticism that has become too obviously tendentious or even merely spiteful: it stops being listened to. Under the present circumstances, this is a risk that the Left has been running more and more, both in America and in the world community, with the result that the culture war threatens to position the American academic Left not as a constructive critic, or even as a usefully carping one, but rather as an outright enemy. This was apparent both before, during, and after the Iraq war, so strikingly that it even led one liberal Left critic to write an astonishing article, in which he confessed to the Schadenfreude he felt at each apparent hint of a prospective disaster for the forces of his own country, made up of his fellow citizens. The problem with this reaction is that it represents a radical imbalance in our civic ecology: if criticism is to push in the right direction, it must not seem to be coming from those who have absolutely nothing in common with us. When the Left-wing intellectual seems to have contempt for everything that the average American holds dear, how seriously do you think his advice will be taken? That is why the intellectual, conservative, liberal, or radical, must submit his own “natural” point of view to the same kind of critique that Marxists have traditionally applied to all other forms of ideological distortion and disguise. For it is not only our economic class that colors how we see the world, but our particular vocation within that class.

The Reconstruction era—the dozen or so years following the end of the Civil War in 1865—had been a horrific time for southern White men like Wade Hampton who were used to ruling their Black people and their women. They faced and beat back with violence and violent ideas a withering civil rights and Black empowerment movement—as well as a powerful women’s movement that failed to grab as many headlines. But their supposed underlings did not stop rebelling after the fall of Reconstruction. To intimidate and reassert their control over rebellious Blacks and White women, White male redeemers took up lynching in the 1880s. Someone was lynched, on average, every four days from 1889 to 1929. Often justifying the ritualistic slaughters on a false rumor that the victim had raped a White woman, White men, women, and children gathered to watch the torture, killing, and dismemberment of human beings—all the while calling the victims savages. Hate fueled the lynching era. But behind this hatred lay racist ideas that had evolved to question Black freedoms at every stage. And behind these racist ideas were powerful White men, striving by word and deed to regain absolute political, economic, and cultural control of the South.24

I’m guessing this one is about a hundred years old,” he said. “Then it’s ancient.” He nodded. “If I’m lucky, I’ll get twenty thousand feet of board out of it. Twelve feet long by an inch thick. Good solid board.” She took a step away from him, her face a mask of shock. “What’s the matter?” “How could you even think about destroying this glorious, magnificent, beautiful tree?” For a long moment he could only stare at her, baffled. “It’s my job. What did you think we’re doing out here? Digging for gold?” “Oh, I know perfectly well what you’re doing. You’ll take all you can get from this land, and then you’ll leave behind a chaotic mess.” “We parcel off the land and sell it to farmers.” “You know that’s not happening.” “Maybe not everywhere.” She planted her fists on her hips. “I’ve traveled around enough of Michigan this winter to see what the land looks like after lumber companies pull out and head somewhere else.” “Oh, come on, Lily.” Exasperation tugged at him. “What would our country do without the supply of lumber we’re providing? If we stop our operations, we’ll deprive the average family of affordable means for building homes.” She arched her brow. “Affordable?” “Compared to brick homes? Yes.” She obviously didn’t know anything about the industry. “As a matter of fact, hundreds of thousands of people in growing midwestern towns rely upon our boards and shingles for their homes. And on the other products that come from these trees.” He patted the pine. “I don’t care.” She reached for the tree, caressing it almost as if it were a living being, trailing her fingers in the deep grooves of the bark. “These trees, this land—they don’t deserve to be ravaged.

I understand individuals and their personal motivations, but when those same individuals become a part of something bigger, some amorphous corporate ball of greed, I can't anticipate the logical next move, because it has long ago stopped being human. Your average human being has a conscience and the world is structured with checks and balances to shed light on that individual should he or she become something ugly and cruel. But a company can hide its corruption; the individuals responsible can sit innocently and united behind their desks for years before they are discovered. They are as guilty as the guy robbing the liquor store in the ski mask, only they're free to show their faces. I had no idea whether I should be looking for the worker bee or the nest, or both, and my nearsightedness cost my boss his job.

Your Average is the invisible wall that stops you from doing what you want to do, saying what you want to say and being who you want to be.

Fight Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism with Red and Near-Infrared Light Therapy Several studies have shown profound benefits of red and near-infrared light therapy for autoimmune hypothyroidism. This is one of the only treatments that has been shown to potentially reverse (or at least greatly slow the progression of) autoimmune hypothyroidism. A recent 2013 randomized, placebo-controlled study in hypothyroid patients demonstrated that in people who got near-infrared light therapy, thyroid function dramatically improved, and remarkably, that thyroid antibody (TPOAb) levels were massively reduced. Amazingly, 47% of patients were able to stop medication completely! Moreover, the researchers also followed up 9 months after treatment and found that the effects were still evident!116 They even published a 6-year follow-up, which basically said that even at 6 years, some of the benefits still remained, but periodic sessions were recommended to maintain all benefits.117 (To be honest, I don’t suggest red/NIR light as a one-time treatment that is expected to last long-term. For optimal benefits, most research indicates that sessions be done with red/NIR therapy at least once a week consistently.) A 2010 study found that red light therapy helped 38% of study participants reduce their hypothyroid medication dose, with a whopping 17% being able to stop taking the medication altogether!118 A 1997 study done in Russia included some data on people with autoimmune hypothyroidism who underwent a thyroid surgery. They found that red/NIR light therapy improved thyroid hormone levels enough that they required, on average, roughly half as much thyroid hormone medication.119 A 2003 study done in the Ukraine showed that red light therapy can decrease thyroid medication needs by 50-75% in people with postsurgical hypothyroidism.120 A 2010 Russian dissertation study gave red light therapy on the thyroid gland to a group of people with hypothyroidism and found that 17% of people could completely get off thyroid medication and 38% could decrease the dose by 25-50µg.121 A 2014 study used the light therapy for 10 sessions with 347 women with subclinical hypothyroidism. At baseline, the average TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) was 9.1 mIU/L. (Note: Higher TSH is a sign of hypothyroidism). After ten sessions of light therapy, the TSH was normalized in 337 (97%) of these women. Their TSH averaged at 2.2 mIU/L after just 10 light treatments.

When someone, almost anyone, is asked to describe paradise, he or she tends to imagine natural settings--waves lapping gently upon a white-sand beach, birds singing softly, or imagines him or herself lying in a meadow of wild flowers and tall grasses, walking through an ancient forest, sitting on a rolling green hillside, or looking out over a vast ocean. They do not generally imagine AI-powered machines ruling their lives. They do not think of drones flying drones flying to and fro, filling the sky like so many menacing, swarming insects. They do not call to mind the sound of screeching bus brakes, crowded elevators, people walking around wearing masks, or driverless vehicles failing to stop for them at a crosswalk. The world being quickly shaped and imagined for us is what the average human would consider to be a dystopian nightmare--not a paradise. Why are we letting our world be turned into a cold, heartless cyberspace fit only for robots and cyborgs and not instead, creating a paradise for ourselves?

All of my most popular Quora answers followed a similar methodology. 800,000+ views: How to become more confident. 783,000+ views: How to stop being average. 507,000+ views: What it feels like to go from unattractive to attractive. 425,000+ views: A stranger I met once that changed my life forever. 412,000+ views: Why having everything you want won’t make you happy.

What Is True Prayer? Spiritual exercises are the way to become more aware of this life. Spiritual exercises, contemplation, and prayer of the right kind are all the same. Basically, it’s opening your heart to God or the Holy Spirit and listening. Correct prayer is listening to God. If a person is going to err in prayer, it’s through too much telling or talking to God. There’s nothing wrong with telling or asking; there’s nothing wrong with talking to God. But after you’ve asked your question, listen. Be quiet and listen. Listening is true prayer, prayer of the highest sort. Even prayer where you’re asking God something is of a high sort, or it can be. But sometimes people carry it to extremes. When I was a child, my parents had us say our childhood prayers at bedtime. As I grew up and went to divinity school, I would still say my prayers at night. Not that those of us at divinity school were very righteous. A very small percentage were truly pious, and the rest of us were about average. We got along. We knew God was there. We did our lessons; we did our Bible study and science and math. There were also those in divinity school who were quite nonpious. I used to say my prayers nightly, but away from home I could try out my wings a little bit. Some nights I’d just lie there and ask God for all kinds of things. I’d ask God for riches. I’d ask God to get rid of my toothaches. They came from all the sugar I ate; I hadn’t made the connection between sugar and tooth decay. Every Sunday I’d go to the bakery and buy all this wonderful chocolate, all these jelly-filled rolls—I’d just stuff myself. I’d buy enough for my friends too. It took me years to figure out what I was doing, and I think the toothaches helped. Life has a way of teaching us better. This is what I learned about prayer, that sometimes there is a wrong sort of prayer: you ask God to take away a toothache when basically you should stop eating the things that give you the toothache. But that’s how we learn. People ask God to make them rich, and at the same time they squander their money. They have done this their whole lives. What kind of a prayer is that? It’s a prayer of irresponsibility. You’re not taking responsibility for your own welfare. I’m not talking about people who through the circumstances of life find themselves in a bad situation or after being retired for twenty years find that inflation has eaten into their savings and it’s very difficult for them to take care of themselves. These are very real problems. If these people ask God for help, you would expect that. But mostly, true prayer is listening to God.

I never really wanted anything other than us all being together as a family. I just wanted to be left alone. He had to get his hands on me! It was as if I was not even allowed to have a childhood, in all truthfulness. I know I had to grow up too fast. He violated me! Why would he do such a thing to me, was it love or hate? It just started with a touch of the hand, and then more and more, I was not going to stop it, because I think I liked it? Yes, I think I did…? He made me feel good and bad all at the same time! I need my friends like I need my dad, and without his love, in my life, my needing for life ran on low, and he drained the rest out of me. I never wanted to do what he wanted me to do. I just wanted to be a kid; I just wanted to be the average girl, like I have seen all around me in school. I do not think anyone loves me, the only one, which loved me like that was my dad. There were no boys out there that wanted me because they knew, only one but he does not count to me. Because he would have done anything to get me to say yes, even if I said no. It was hard to find real love, because of who my mom is, and what my dad was. Yet I thought it was my mom, which destroyed my life. That she stopped me from being who I was meant to become. I wanted to do so much and see so much. Yes, I love her for being my mom, but why did she have to be my mom. Dad was the only one I wanted, then. After everything fell apart, I just needed to get away from the craziness, so I did, and that is why I am here now. The way I am, with my mom, it is so crazy I know. I never loved life; to me, there was no point in living at all. If I could not love who I wanted to love and be with the one I wanted, it would have been so wrong. It was so wrong! I remember my first school bus ride and I met my two friends that were Lexi Cruosin and Stephanie Colt. Lexi was a mouthy friend she grew up to become a cheerleader in school, and she left me behind.

Whites impose these rules on themselves because they know blacks, in particular, are so quick to take offense. Radio host Dennis Prager was surprised to learn that a firm that runs focus groups on radio talk shows excludes blacks from such groups. It had discovered that almost no whites are willing to disagree with a black. As soon as a black person voiced an opinion, whites agreed, whatever they really thought. When Mr. Prager asked his listening audience about this, whites called in from around the country to say they were afraid to disagree with a black person for fear of being thought racist. Attempts at sensitivity can go wrong. In 2009, there were complaints from minority staff in the Delaware Department of Transportation about insensitive language, so the department head, Carolann Wicks, distributed a newsletter describing behavior and language she considered unacceptable. Minorities were so offended that the newsletter spelled out the words whites were not supposed to use that the department had to recall and destroy the newsletter. The effort whites put into observing racial etiquette has been demonstrated in the laboratory. In experiments at Tufts University and Harvard Business School, a white subject was paired with a partner, and each was given 30 photographs of faces that varied by race, sex, and background color. They were then supposed to identify one of the 30 faces by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible. Asking about race was clearly a good way to narrow down the possibilities —whites did not hesitate to use that strategy when their partner was white—but only 10 percent could bring themselves to mention race if their partner was black. They were afraid to admit that they even noticed race. When the same experiment was done with children, even white 10- and 11-year olds avoided mentioning race, though younger children were less inhibited. Because they were afraid to identify people by race if the partner was black, older children performed worse on the test than younger children. “This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,” said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts who co-authored the study. During Barack Obama’s campaign for President, Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asked the white students in his class to raise their hands if they had a black friend on campus. All did so. At the time, blacks were about 10 percent of the student body, so for every white to have a black friend, every black must have had an average of eight or nine white friends. However, when Prof. Bonilla-Silva asked the blacks in the class if they had white friends none raised his hand. One hesitates to say the whites were lying, but there would be deep disapproval of any who admitted to having no black friends, whereas there was no pressure on blacks to claim they had white friends. Nor is there the same pressure on blacks when they talk insultingly about whites. Claire Mack is a former mayor and city council member of San Mateo, California. In a 2006 newspaper interview, she complained that too many guests on television talk shows were “wrinkled-ass white men.” No one asked her to apologize. Daisy Lynum, a black commissioner of the city of Orlando, Florida, angered the city’s police when she complained that a “white boy” officer had pulled her son over for a traffic stop. She refused to apologize, saying, “That is how I talk and I don’t plan to change.” During his 2002 reelection campaign, Sharpe James, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, referred to his light-skinned black opponent as “the faggot white boy.” This caused no ripples, and a majority-black electorate returned him to office.

If John Quincy Adams was afraid of Anne Royall, he had good reason to be. The woman was a goddamn Terminator. She could not be scared, and she could not be stopped: Court rulings, public harassment, and attempts on her life notwithstanding, she kept publishing until her death at the age of eighty-five. She wasn’t always right, or even admirable—she was on the wrong side of abolition, for one thing—but she was a historically formidable human being. And (Alice Morse Earle doesn’t even mention this) she was quite probably the first female journalist in the United States. And yet, for all that, she was remembered by successive generations as a crazy bitch who almost got thrown into a river. If it can happen to Anne Royall, who left a larger-than-average paper trail, one wonders how many other women’s stories have been lost to us, through the strategic application of “insanity” diagnoses or public humiliation. How many firsts are still waiting for us, in those moldy, decaying old books, needing only a little careful dusting-off to come back to life?

Like many other people, I had believed that hospice care hastens death, because patients forgo hospital treatments and are allowed high-dose narcotics to combat pain. But multiple studies find otherwise. In one, researchers followed 4,493 Medicare patients with either terminal cancer or end-stage congestive heart failure. For the patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, or colon cancer, the researchers found no difference in survival time between those who went into hospice and those who didn’t. And curiously, for some conditions, hospice care seemed to extend survival. Those with pancreatic cancer gained an average of three weeks, those with lung cancer gained six weeks, and those with congestive heart failure gained three months. The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.

As one longtime New York realtor once said of conspicuous wealth, "It was considered un-American." The rich were also, as they likely would be in a lower-consuming economy, simply less rich. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, for the fifty years following the Great Depression, the tax rate on the highest income bracket averaged 80 percent, redistributing much of the richest Americans' wealth. Beginning in the 1980s with the advent of politicians like Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and with growth increasingly seen as the be-all and end-all of economics, far less was asked of the wealthy. The comparable tax figure for 2020 was 37 percent.

As one longtime New York realtor once said of conspicuous wealth, "It was considered un-American." The rich were also, as they likely would be in a lower-consuming economy, simply less rich. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, for the fifty years following the Great Depression, the tax rate on the highest income bracket averaged 80 percent, redistributing much of the richest Americans' wealth. Beginning in the 1980s with the advent of politicians like Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and with growth increasingly seen as the be-all and end-all of economics, far less was asked of the wealthy. The comparable tax figure for 2020 was 37 percent.

his attention to the opposite pew and stared at Tansey again. He was actually quite enjoying himself. Today was much more fun for him than your average boring day out. Brett turned to his brother. ‘Stop it. Leave her be,’ he ordered. Beau clasped his hands together and

mare, sensing authority, stopped in her tracks as well. “Do you honestly believe that dogs don’t have souls? Have you ever met a dog who wasn’t a hundred times nicer than your average human being?