Superiority Complex Quotes

What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.

If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one “the way I am.” This is a full-blown superiority complex.

Everyone loses their class when they travel through hell, but only a few will regain it if they remain humble and accept the part they played in their own misery.

Heroes are just villains with worse survival instincts and moral superiority complexes.

I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?" Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life.

I’ve had a lot of practice. The Pack contains thirty-two species in seven tribes, each with their own hang-up. Jackals and coyotes pick fights with wolves, because they have an inferiority complex and think they’ve got something to prove. Wolves believe themselves to be superior, marry the wrong people, and then refuse to divorce them because they cling to their ‘mating for life’ idiocy. Hyenas listen to nobody, screw everything, and break out in berserk rages at some perceived slight against one of their own. Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can. That’s my life. I’ve been at this for fifteen years now. You’re easy by comparison.

One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.

A what? (Fang) Badass demon with a superiority complex who picks his teeth with bones of infants. Let’s just keep it simple and say he’s a demon I want out of the human realm. ASAP. (Thorn)

Well I think I’m talking to an oversized iguana with a superiority complex, wrapped in an expensive suit.

It is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves, short-change ourselves, sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a superiority complex. People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority; their "superior" self is a fiction, a coverup, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.

You can't have an inferiority complex and a superiority complex. Just pick one.

If Korea were a person, it would be diagnosed as a neurotic, with both an inferiority and a superiority complex.

Don't plead with anyone if you were not at fault, you'll only look inferior, stupid and funny, bolster your ego by doing the undoing.

Anyone who tells you that he or she knows the "correct" way to study either is lying or has a superiority complex

I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)

Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?" Bryce: "No." Huxley: "Seabags Brown does." Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..." Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?" Bryce: "Not much." Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too." Bryce: "I don't..." Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?" Bryce: "A little." Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship." Bryce: "This is most puzzling." Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?" Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer." Huxley: "In the original Greek?" Bryce: "No" Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek." Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?" Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass.

It's not a matter of pride; it's a matter of principle. I simply will not bow, for I stand too tall for even the Heavens to climb.

Noa stared at her. She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn't himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated. His presence would prove to the world that she was a good person, an educated person, a liberal person. Noa didn't care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn't care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes. But that wasn't possible. It would never be possible with her.

Victimhood gives us great moral superiority and entitles us to unquestioning sympathy while exempting us from examining any single one of our actions. A victim is utterly devoid of responsibility or blame. This of course leaves us vulnerable as we will carry on engaging in precisely the behaviour which provoked an unacceptable response.

Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you.

I'm not so much a good friend as I am the saviour who wants you to worship him forever.

Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon!

Continuously feeling superior is a characteristic of immaturity.

Increasing complexity” on its own is not, however, the ultimate goal or end-product of these evolutionary processes. Evolution results in better answers, not necessarily more complicated ones. Sometimes a superior solution is a simpler one.

I raise an eyebrow, working to achieve the right tone of intellectual superiority. “If you've never read the Twilight books or the Hunger Games series you wouldn't understand. Not. One. Bit. They are complex stories. Big words. Probably beyond you.

Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

We were all in it together, of course, desperate to regain some hypothetical upper hand by any means necessary.

Don't show your inferiority by climbing a stunted tree, show your superiority by climbing the longest and crooked one.

The origins of your superiority complex lies less in how you can elevate your own self-worth & more in how you can dedicate your abilities to lower someone else's.

Feminism, which is supposedly for everybody, apparently has no place for conservative women. Why would feminists need to exclude entire swaths of the population? Because they know their ideology cannot stand up to challenges, they know they themselves do not understand it, and they know that to accomplish their goals they cannot allow discussion to occur....To pretend that your ideology is impenetrable and the obvious answer to modern social problems and then to turn around and exclude people from the discussion only creates more holes in the theories themselves and serves to demonstrate the liberal superiority complex.

He acted like he was superior to the Renegades, but he was nothing more than a hero reject with a power complex.

I think, more than anything, people like to feel superior to others. Canadians like to feel that they’re better than Americans. Americans love to feel they’re better than the whole world. And when people feel superior, it makes it harder for them to see the problems just beneath the surface. They don’t want to believe them, to face them, because if they did, can they really claim to be superior anymore?

We have this extraordinary conceit in the West that while we've been hard at work in the creation of technological wizardry and innovation, somehow the other cultures of the world have been intellectually idle. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nor is this difference due to some sort of inherent Western superiority. We now know to be true biologically what we've always dreamed to be true philosophically, and that is that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all, by definition, cut from the same genetic cloth. That means every single human society and culture, by definition, shares the same raw mental activity, the same intellectual capacity. And whether that raw genius is placed in service of technological wizardry or unraveling the complex thread of memory inherent in a myth is simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation.

One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well—and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space.

An inferiority complex thinks: "Everyone else is better than me." A superiority complex thinks: "I'm better than everyone else." A healthy self-concept is based on the belief: "I'm just as good as anyone else and everyone has great potential.

This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel.

What are narcissists looking for, after all? Just someone at their level that they can feel superior to.

In existence there is no inferiority complex anywhere, and as a corollary there is no superiority complex either.

This is not good," I said. "These guys have a superiority complex bigger than Miss Compton's butt." "And she had the biggest butt of them all," Kyle said.

Vanna Bonta—I would rather have an inferiority complex and be pleasantly surprised, than have a superiority complex and be rudely awakened.

A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.

There’s only one way to describe most investors: trend followers. Superior investors are the exact opposite. Superior investing, as I hope I’ve convinced you by now, requires second-level thinking—a way of thinking that’s different from that of others, more complex and more insightful.

If I could give the most concise and accurate definition of a narcissist, it would be this: “a person with severe inferiority complex which has mutated in equally severe superiority complex".

Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a reader who is necessarily severe. By turning inside out like a glove an overworked complex that has become debased to the point of being part of the vocabulary of statesmen, we might say that the literary critic and the professor of rhetoric, who know-all and judge-all, readily go in for a simplex of superiority. As for me, being an addict of felicitous reading, I only read and re-read what I like, with a bit of reader's pride mixed in with much enthusiasm.

Domination and submission can be healthy traits in an environment of trust. But superiority complex in man and inferiority complex in woman forms a toxic circle. One becomes oppressor, the other becomes manipulative. Both harm each other.

I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means.

Sometimes people are intimidated not because you're superior, but they fear your presence may make them conscious of their choice of remaining inferior!

In spiritual context, ego doesn't mean just the superiority complex. Those who have inferiority complex have even bigger egos. Ego means strong identification with a particular body-mind which leads to unhealthy comparison with other body-minds.

As a citizen of the world, I will not confine myself within the gates of one nation or religion. I will not identify with only one species, sex, class or race; for I am a complete being, and that means that I embrace all of humanity, all of nature, every star and universe within the greater universe as a part of me. If we were all created in the image of God, and his love is unconditional, then why can't we love all living things with the same eyes as God? How can anybody say that one race is more superior than another, when we were all created in God's reflection?

I had never been a dresser. My shirts were all faded and shrunken, 5 or 6 years old, threadbare. My pants the same. I hated department stores, I hated the clerks, they acted so superior, they seemed to know the secret of life, they had a confidence I didn't possess. My shoes were always broken down and old, I disliked shoe stores too. I never purchased anything until it was completely unusable, and that included automobiles. It wasn't a matter of thrift, I just couldn't bear to be a buyer needing a seller, seller being so handsome and aloof and superior. Besides, it all took time, time when you could just be laying around and drinking.

The issue of race, however, has been with us since our earliest beginnings as a nation. I believe it is even deeper and sharper than the other points of contention. It has bred fears, myths, and violence over centuries. It is the source of dark and dangerous irrationality, a current of social pathology running through our history and dimming our brighter achievements. Most of the time the reservoir of racism remains stagnant. But--and this has been true historically for most societies--when major economic, social, or political crises arise, the backwaters are stirred and latent racial hostility comes to the surface. Scapegoats must be found, simple targets substituted for complex problems. The frustration and insecurity generated by these problems find an outlet in notions of racial superiority and inferiority.

We all know someone who criticizes us to diminish our confidence or belittle our achievements. A person so disturbed, they project their insecurity onto others to make themselves feel superior. But no one can destroy what God has built up. Your greatest defense against their inferiority complex? Become a reminder of why they are inferior.

So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.

Snobbery does not show superiority. It shows insecurity which is born from a feeling of inferiority.

We tempt others to look down on us by telling them that we look up to them.

PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one “the way I am.” This is a full-blown superiority complex.

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling.

The Christian approach begins with a different analysis of the situation. We believe that, as badly wounded as persons may be, the resulting self-absorption of the human heart was not caused by the mistreatment. It was only magnified and shaped by it. Their mistreatment poured gasoline on the fire, and the flame and smoke now choke them, but their self-centeredness already existed prior to their woundedness. Therefore, if you do nothing but urge people to “look out for number one,” you will be setting them up for future failure in any relationship, especially marriage. This is not to say that wounded people don’t need great gentleness, tender treatment, affirmation, and patience. It is just that this is not the whole story. Both people crippled by inferiority feelings and those who have superiority complexes are centered on themselves, obsessed with how they look and how they are being perceived and treated. It would be easy to help someone out of an inferiority complex into a superiority complex and leave them no better furnished to live life well.

Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up... The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in the conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening; no-one is in control, the world is rudderless.

Leonardo did not pursue science and engineering in order to dominate nature, as Francis Bacon would advocate a century later, but always tried to learn as much as possible from nature. He was in awe of the beauty he saw in the complexity of natural forms, patterns, and processes, and aware that nature’s ingenuity was far superior to human design. Accordingly, he often used natural processes and structures as models for his own designs.

I think, my boy, it’s not time that is limited either. If one wants to evolve to the next level, one has plenty of time. So, lack of time or indulgence isn’t the true obstacle,” Master said once. “Then what is the true obstacle?” asked Ruem. “Ego.” “Ego? You mean the idea of self?” Yuan asked. “No, not those complex ideas of self or I, rather the pure ego. The ego that tells you, you’ve evolved enough; that you’re the most superior creation already. My boy, you never think of evolving to the next level because you believe you’ve reached it. You believe you’re in the final level of cognitive evolution already. But you are not. There’s always another level.

I belong to that small group of chosen people, who because of their superior knowledge and talents are far above ordinary human rules and limitations. We have advanced beyond such conventional notions as ‘good' and ‘bad'.

That gospel message should both humble and lift the believer up at the same time. It teaches us that we are indeed self-centered sinners. It perforates our illusions about our goodness and superiority. But the gospel also fills us with more love and affirmation than we could ever imagine. It means we don’t need to earn our self-worth through incessant service and work. It means also that we don’t mind so much when we are deprived of some comfort, compliment, or reward. We don’t have to keep records and accounts anymore. We can freely give and freely receive.

We’re always rationally explaining and articulating things. But we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs—or doesn’t—in that instant. What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we “know” something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple. But the “knowing” at such moments, though happening without language, is real. I’d say this is what art is for: to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it’s superior to our usual (conceptual, reductive) way.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education and, even more amazing, no superiority complex since he had succeeded despite that lack. He would say often, "I been to school three years in my life. In Slaten, Texas, times was hard, and I had to help my daddy on the farm." No recriminations lay hidden under the plain statement, nor was there boasting when he said, "If I'm living a little better now, it's because I treats everybody right.

To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, mêlées of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life!

Though many desperately and relentlessly cling to old, divisive ideas in the face of a future that looks complex and uncertain, no one can legitimately portray themselves as members or practitioners of the one true faith, the superior race, the best culture. No one can say, with the image of the blue and green Earth floating in their heads, that others don't count as much as "we" do, that others don't hold the same status as we do, are not as significant as us, are ultimately just not as human as us.

The communist world, it may be noted, has one big myth (which we call an illusion, in the vain hope that our superior judgment will make it disappear). It is the time-hallowed archetypal dream of Golden Age (or Paradise) where everything is provided in abundance for everyone, and a great, just and wise chief rules over the human kindergarten. This powerful archetype in its infantile form has gripped them, but it will never disappear from the world at the mere sight of our superior points of view. We even support it by our own childishness, for our Western civilization is in the grip of the same mythology. Unconsciously, we cherish the same prejudices, hopes, and expectations. We too believe in the welfare state, in universal peace, in the equality of man, in his eternal human rights, in justice, truth, and (do not say it too loudly) in the Kingdom of God on Earth. The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex and inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

In this second half of life, one has less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again those old rash judgments, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Your superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. You do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego based, counterproductive, and often entirely wrong. You learn to positively ignore and withdraw your energy from evil or stupid things rather than fight them directly.

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely,— that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind,— that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable,— and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

We have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

He had a deep respect for life, a special compassion for animals, and great awe and reverence for nature’s complexity and abundance. While a brilliant inventor and designer himself, he always thought that nature’s ingenuity was vastly superior to human design. He felt that we would be wise to respect nature and learn from her.

These include the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.

When a person uses his or her position of power from a church, corporation, or government to throw disgust upon a person for holding a different perspective, the person with the position of power is using lust as a mindset to gain control over the masses. Superior-Disgust-Lust is a complex and it's a method by which individuals steal from other human beings.

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[...]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards “Them” (i.e., anyone who is not one of “Us”) is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview.

Other lakes get similar treatment. According to Michigan markers, whites discovered Lake Michigan, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Superior. Lake Erie gets a more complex marker: “Named for the Erie Indians, this was the last of the Great Lakes discovered by white men...” Actually, none of them was discovered by white men, but this marker at least admits that Native Americans existed and implies they knew of Lake Erie.

The most effective strategies do not depend solely on violence—though this can play an instrumental role, by demonstrating superiority as much as expressing aggression—but benefit instead from the ability to forge coalitions. Little in the rest of this book will suggest that this list should be expanded. The elements of strategic behavior have not changed, only the complexity of the situations in which they must be applied.

Because they have their strategy-the strategy of laissez­ faire; the strategy of individual versus collective effort, of appealing to that little bit of selfishness that exists in each person to beat out the rest. They appeal to that petty superiority complex that every­ one possesses that makes one think they are better than everybody else. The monopolies instill in individuals, from childhood on, the view that since you are better and work harder, that it is in your interest to struggle individually against everyone else, to defeat ev­eryone else and become an exploiter yourself. The monopolies go to great lengths to prove that collective ef­fort enslaves and prevents the smarter and more capable from get­ting ahead. As if the people were made up simply of individuals, some more intelligent, some more capable. As if the people were something other than a great mass of wills and hearts that all have more or less the same capacity for work, the same spirit of sacrifice, and the same intelligence. They go to the undifferentiated masses and try to sow divisions: between blacks and whites, more capable and less capable, literate and illiterate. They then subdivide people even more, until they single out the individual and make the individual the center of so­ciety.

We assume that a large brain, the use of tools, superior learning abilities and complex social structures are huge advantages. It seems self-evident that these have made humankind the most powerful animal on earth. But humans enjoyed all of these advantages for a full 2 million years during which they remained weak and marginal creatures. Thus humans who lived a million years ago, despite their big brains and sharp stone tools, dwelt in constant fear of predators, rarely hunted large game, and subsisted mainly by gathering plants, scooping up insects, stalking small animals, and eating the carrion left behind by other more powerful carnivores.

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not “natural.” This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction.

As for woman, her inferiority complex manifests itself in a rejection out of shame of her femininity: it is not the absence of a penis that unleashes this complex but the total situation; the girl envies the phallus only as a symbol of the privileges granted to boys; the father’s place in the family, the universal predominance of males, and upbringing all confirm her idea of masculine superiority. Later, in the course of sexual relations, even the coital posture that places the woman underneath the man is an added humiliation. She reacts by a “masculine protest”; she either tries to masculinize herself or uses her feminine wiles to go into battle against man. Through motherhood she can find in her child the equivalent of the penis. But this supposes that she must first accept herself completely as woman, and thus accept her inferiority. She is far more deeply divided against herself than is man.

There is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought into relation with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose - more of them in proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine and that of its work.

If, as Moses Mendelssohn maintains, Judaism is not a religion but a revealed legislation, it seems strange that such a God should be its author and symbol. He who has, precisely, nothing of the legislator about Him. Incapable of the slightest effort of objectivity, He dispenses justice according to His whim, without any code to limit His divagations and His impulses. He is a despot as jittery as He is aggressive, saturated with complexes, an ideal subject for psychoanalysis. He disarms metaphysics, which detects in Him no trace of a substantial, self-sufficient Being superior to the world and content with the interval that separates Him from it. A clown who has inherited heaven and who there perpetuates the wost traditions of earth, he employes means, astounded by His own power and proud of having made its effects felt. Yet His vehemence, His shifts of mood, His spasmodic outbursts finally attract, if they do not convince us. Not at all resigned to His eternity, He intervenes in the affairs of earth, makes a mess of them, sowing confusion and clutter. He disconcerts, irritates, seduces.

A questão é: você já reparou como nós esmagamos uma barata numa boa e não sentimos remorso nenhum, apesar de estarmos na realidade exterminando uma vida? Pois é. Fazemos isso porque não nos identificamos com a barata. Porque ela é muito diferente de nós. [...] Pensando por esse lado, acho que algumas pessoas às vezes tendem a fazer do mesmo jeito com relação a outras. Ou seja, elas veem com distanciamento aqueles com quem não se identificam logo de cara, entende? É como se o estranho, que não faz parte do mesmo grupo que nós, fosse visto como um ser inferior... Quase uma barata!

At times, as I read through Harry’s ever-stranger arguments, I wondered: How could a man like this have persuaded so many people? But the answers were lying there, waiting for me, in the piles of letters he received from members of the public, from senators, and from presidents. They wanted to be persuaded. They wanted easy answers to complex fears. It’s tempting to feel superior—to condescend to these people—but I suspect this impulse is there in all of us. The public wanted to be told that these deep, complex problems—race, inequality, geopolitics—came down to a few powders and pills, and if these powders and pills could be wiped from the world, these problems would disappear. It

In themselves human experiences are not superior at all to the experiences of wolves or elephants. One bit of data is as good as another. However, humans can write poems and blogs about their experiences and post them online, thereby enriching the global data-processing system. That makes their bits count. Wolves cannot do this. Hence all the experiences of wolves – as deep and complex as they may be – are worthless. No wonder we are so busy converting our experiences into data. It isn’t a question of trendiness. It is a question of survival. We must prove to ourselves and to the system that we still have value. And value lies not in having experiences, but in turning these experiences into free-flowing data.

Unfortunately, complex human societies seem to require imagined hierarchies and unjust discrimination. Of course not all hierarchies are morally identical, and some societies suffered from more extreme types of discrimination than others, yet scholars know of no large society that has been able to dispense with discrimination altogether. Time and again people have created order in their societies by classifying the population into imagined categories, such as superiors, commoners and slaves; whites and blacks; patricians and plebeians; Brahmins and Shudras; or rich and poor. These categories have regulated relations between millions of humans by making some people legally, politically or socially superior to others.

Asexuality isn't a complex. It's not a sickness. It's not an automatic sign of trauma. It's not a behaviour. It's not the result of a decision. It's not a chastity vow or an expression that we are 'saving ourselves'. We aren't by definition religious. We aren't calling ourselves asexual as a statement of purity or moral superiority. We're not amoebas or plants. We aren't automatically gender confused, anti-gay, anti-straight, anti-any-sexual orientation, anti-woman, anti-man, anti-any-gender or anti sex. We aren't automatically going through a phase, following a trend, or trying to rebel. We aren't defined by prudishness. We aren't calling ourselves asexual because we failed to find a suitable partner. We aren't necessarily afraid of intimacy. And we aren't asking for anyone to 'fix' us.

The more I know the human being, the more I cling to animal nature. Mention poem 2013 Since its beginnings, the human being has been a complex and enigmatic being, capable of great achievements and feats, and at the same time, of the most cruel and vile acts. There is no doubt that our species is one of the most evolved and sophisticated of the planet, but at what cost? What is behind our apparent superiority? When we observe human behavior, we can see that it hides a mixture of animal instincts and rational thoughts. Although human beings take pride in our ability for critical thinking and reflection, We are also emotional, impulsive and visceral beings. And it is precisely this duality that makes us so different from animals. that cohabit this planet with us. It is often difficult for us to understand the nature of animals, because we cannot access their internal world. However, what we can say is that animals are transparent beings, His actions are always a consequence of his instincts, not from premeditated thoughts or complex emotions. For animals, living is following their instinct, something that allows them to act quickly and effectively in situations of danger or threat. Animals are beings in balance with their environment, They don't feel the need to constantly change, nor to think beyond the here and now. On the other hand, we have human beings, beings capable of conceiving abstract thoughts, create works of art, invent technologies and, at the same time, of destroying the environment, oppressing other human beings and commit acts of extreme cruelty. The human being is a complex, contradictory being, capable of loving and hating, forgiving and punishing, healing and destroying. We are creatures of light and darkness, in a constant search for balance between both parties. But what is behind our duality as human beings? Why are we capable of the worst acts of destruction and cruelty? If we look back at the history of humanity, we can see that our genetic patterns are impregnated of violence, war and resentment. History has been a constant parade of wars and conflicts, each one more brutal than the last. This being the only way in which many cultures they have found to impose their ideas or consolidate power. It is precisely here that the idea is born that the creators of humanity They have intoxicated us with the yoke of evil. Who are these forgers? They are the same societies, cultures, religions, policies, which have used violence, war and resentment as a tool to impose their desires and ideals on others. This is the curse that we have dragged like chains since long ago, that of a genetic pattern that drags us towards violence and war. It is true that, as human beings, we can choose our own paths, our own decisions, and not fall into the trap of cruelty and evil. However, it is also true that we carry within us an ancestral burden that is difficult to overcome. What will the most advanced civilizations in the universe think of us? Will we be violent and hateful beings for them? Or will we be beings like animals, in balance with our environment? The answer is not easy, since it remains an unknown. if we are able to overcome our animal instincts and embrace only the best of our humanity. The key to this lies in becoming aware of our own duality, to recognize that we carry both light and darkness within us, and make a real effort to choose the best of ourselves, instead of letting ourselves be carried away by our internal evil.

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract, let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

Do those of you in like Chicago or NYC ever notice how commuters on the train tend to get all quiet and intense when South Side or South Bronx starts to flow past? If you look closely at the faces, you see it’s not depression, not even discomfort; it’s a kind of rigid fascination with the beauty of ruins in which people live but look or love nothing like you, a horizonful of numbly complex vistas in slab-gray and spraypaint-red. Hieroglyphs on walls, people on stoops, hoops w/o nets. White people have always loved to gaze at the ‘real black world,’ preferably at a distance and while moving briskly through, toward business. A view from this remove yields easy abstractions about rap in its role as just the latest ‘black’ music. Like: the less real power a people have, the more they’ll assert hegemony in areas that don’t much matter in any grand scheme. A way to rule in hell: their own vocabulary, syntax, gestures, music, dance; own food; religious rhetoric; social and party customs; that…well-known athletic superiority—the foot-speed, vertical leap—we like them in fields, cotton- or ball-. It’s a Hell we like to look at because it has so clearly been made someone else’s very own….And the exported popular arts! The singing and dancing!…each innovation, new Scene, and genius born of a ‘suffering’ we somehow long to imagine, even as we co-opt, overpay, homogenize, make the best of that suffering song go to stud for our own pale performers.

I find it simpler to envision shedding tears over a matter than picturing myself genuinely prepared for change. Understanding my emotions proves intricate. It commences with a yearning to refine my thought processes, a longing to evolve into a superior version of myself, and an acknowledgment of the knowledge and superiority of others beyond my current perception. On rare occasions, this contemplation lingers within me, day after day, gradually evolving from a fleeting thought into an intrinsic facet of my identity. The aforementioned notion holds promise for instigating positive change within me, yet it often necessitates a significant passage of time before I yearn for it, and the resultant impact is distressing. I come to terms with the notion that my heart is astray, preyed upon by untamed beasts. I can anticipate your reassurance: "Don't worry, no one is perfect." Nonetheless, I acknowledge that I stand just a notch above the beasts and several steps below the angels.

You can't trust people, she said. Anytime you think you can, they just throw it back at you. Simon is the worst of all. You know what's wrong with him? I'm serious, it's called a martyr complex. He never needs anything from anyone, and he thinks that makes him a superior being. Whereas in reality, he just leads a sad stare on life, sitting alone in his apartment, telling himself what a good person he is. When I was really sick, I called him on the phone one night and he brought me to the hospital--that's all! And now I have to hear about it whenever I see him. What has he done with his life? Nothing. At least I can say I've contributed something to the world. And he thinks he's superior to me because he picked up the phone once. He goes around making friends with unstable people just so he can feel good about himself. Especially women, especially younger women. And if they have no money, that's even better! You know he's six years older than me? What has he done with his life?

The civil machinery which ensured the carrying out of this law, and the military organization which turned numbers of men into battalions and divisions, were each founded on a bureaucracy. The production of resources, in particular guns and ammunition, was a matter for civil organization. The movement of men and resources to the front, and the trench system of defence, were military concerns.” Each interlocking system was logical in itself and each system could be rationalized by those who worked it and moved through it. Thus, Elliot demonstrates, “It is reasonable to obey the law, it is good to organize well, it is ingenious to devise guns of high technical capacity, it is sensible to shelter human beings against massive firepower by putting them in protective trenches.” What was the purpose of this complex organization? Officially it was supposed to save civilization, protect the rights of small democracies, demonstrate the superiority of Teutonic culture, beat the dirty Hun, beat the arrogant British, what have you. But the men caught in the middle came to glimpse a darker truth. “The War had become undisguisedly mechanical and inhuman,” Siegfried Sassoon allows a fictional infantry officer to see. “What in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now droves of victims.”378 Men on every front independently discovered their victimization. Awareness intensified as the war dragged on. In Russia it exploded in revolution. In Germany it motivated desertions and surrenders. Among the French it led to mutinies in the front lines. Among the British it fostered malingering.

If the ecological community is ever achieved in practice, social life will yield a sensitive development of human and natural diversity, falling together into a well balanced, harmonious whole. Ranging from community through region to entire continents, we will see a colorful differentiation of human groups and ecosystems, each developing its unique potentialities and exposing members of the community to a wide spectrum of economic, cultural and behavioral stimuli. Falling within our purview will be an exciting, often dramatic, variety of communal forms—here marked by architectural and industrial adaptations to semi-arid ecosystems, there to grasslands, elsewhere by adaptation to forested areas. We will witness a creative interplay between individual and group , community and environment, humanity and nature. The cast of mind that today organizes differences among humans and other lifeforms along hierarchical lines, defining the external in terms of its "superiority" or "inferiority," will give way to an outlook that deals with diversity in an ecological manner. Differences among people will be respected, indeed fostered, as elements that enrich the unity of experience and phenomena. The traditional relationship which pits subject against object will be altered qualitatively; the "external," the "different," the "other" will be conceived of as individual parts of a whole all the richer because of its complexity. This sense of unity will reflect the harmonization of interests between individuals and between society and nature. Freed from an oppressive routine, from paralyzing repressions and insecurities, from the burdens of toil and false needs, from the trammels of authority and irrational compulsion, individuals will finally, for the first time in history, be in a position to realize their potentialities as members of the human community and the natural world.

The failure of Communism was consecrated in the fall of the Soviet Union. The remarkable thing is that, as in most cases when prophecy fails, the faith never faltered. Indeed, an alternative version had long been maturing, though cast into the shadows for a time by enthusiasm for the quick fix of revolution. It had, however, been maturing for at least a century and already had a notable repertoire of institutions available. We may call it Olympianism, because it is the project of an intellectual elite that believes that it enjoys superior enlightenment and that its business is to spread this benefit to those living on the lower slopes of human achievement. And just as Communism had been a political project passing itself off as the ultimate in scientific understanding, so Olympianism burrowed like a parasite into the most powerful institution of the emerging knowledge economy--the universities. We may define Olympianism as a vision of human betterment to be achieved on a global scale by forging the peoples of the world into a single community based on the universal enjoyment of appropriate human rights. Olympianism is the cast of mind dedicated to this end, which is believed to correspond to the triumph of reason and community over superstition and hatred. It is a politico-moral package in which the modern distinction between morals and politics disappears into the aspiration for a shared mode of life in which the communal transcends individual life. To be a moral agent is in these terms to affirm a faith in a multicultural humanity whose social and economic conditions will be free from the causes of current misery. Olympianism is thus a complex long-term vision, and contemporary Western Olympians partake of different fragments of it. To be an Olympian is to be entangled in a complex dialectic involving elitism and egalitarianism. The foundational elitism of the Olympian lies in self-ascribed rationality, generally picked up on an academic campus. Egalitarianism involves a formal adherence to democracy as a rejection of all forms of traditional authority, but with no commitment to taking any serious notice of what the people actually think. Olympians instruct mortals, they do not obey them. Ideally, Olympianism spreads by rational persuasion, as prejudice gives way to enlightenment. Equally ideally, democracy is the only tolerable mode of social coordination, but until the majority of people have become enlightened, it must be constrained within a framework of rights, to which Olympian legislation is constantly adding. Without these constraints, progress would be in danger from reactionary populism appealing to prejudice. The overriding passion of the Olympian is thus to educate the ignorant and everything is treated in educational terms. Laws for example are enacted not only to shape the conduct of the people, but also to send messages to them. A belief in the power of role models, public relations campaigns, and above all fierce restrictions on raising sensitive questions devant le peuple are all part of pedagogic Olympianism.