The Fates Divide Quotes

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.

then the voice in my head said WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS REVOLT AGAINST IT WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE

A soft heart was a gift, whether given easily or with great reluctance. I would never take it for granted again.

Death is not the only punishment you can give a person. You can also give them nightmares.

Sometimes she still said things that wounded me. And not because they were lies.

It was ridiculous. But so was much of the galaxy.

He ran as he'd never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided into opposites and his side had already been chosen for him, his only choice being whether or not to play his part with heart and courage. He ran because fate had placed him in a position of responsibility and he had accepted the burden. He ran because his self-respect required it. He ran because he loved his friends and this was the only thing he could do to end the madness that was killing and maiming them.

What does Mother always say? Those who go looking for pain...' 'Find it every time,' I replied, completing the phrase.

We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).

Life is full of pain', I had told Akos, trying to draw him back from depression. 'Your capacity for bearing it is greater than you believe.' And I had been right.

Suffer the fate, for all else is delusion.

Why do you have this expectation that life will make concessions for you?' She scowled. 'We are not promised ease, comfort, or fairness. Only pain and death.

I am a Shotet. I am sharp as a blade and just as strong, I see all of the galaxy and it is all mine.

There's poetry in it, in that poetry can be raw, and cruel, and strange, like this.

It wasn't pretending I wouldn't get knocked down that protected me, but the knowledge that I would get back up as many times as I had to.

They were both people who carried every scrap of everything around, but maybe they could help each other set things down, piece by piece.

A soft heart was a gift, whether given easily or with great reluctance.

So we were tangled in a web together, cause and effect and choice and fate all intermingling.

This means that, in some sense, free will is a fake. Decisions are made ahead of time by the brain, without the input of consciousness, and then later the brain tries to cover this up (as it’s wont to do) by claiming that the decision was conscious. Dr. Michael Sweeney concludes, “Libet’s findings suggested that the brain knows what a person will decide before the person does. … The world must reassess not only the idea of movements divided between voluntary and involuntary, but also the very idea of free will.” All this seems to indicate that free will, the cornerstone of society, is a fiction, an illusion created by our left brain. So are we masters of our fate, or just pawns in a swindle perpetuated by the brain?

In 1965, a psychologist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs. He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov--the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell, instead of providing food, he zapped the dogs with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment. After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. He figured if the dog rang the bell, it would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn't. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking the dog after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box that had never been shocked before or had previously been allowed to escape and tried to zap it--it jumped the fence. You are just like these dogs. If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time that there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act--you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism. Studies of the clinically depressed show that they often give in to defeat and stop trying. . . Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up opportunities to hang out with people. The loss of control in any situation can lead to this state. . . Choices, even small ones, can hold back the crushing weight of helplessness, but you can't stop there. You must fight back your behavior and learn to fail with pride. Failing often is the only way to ever get the things you want out of life. Besides death, your destiny is not inescapable.

When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be. If you "help" individual trees by getting rid of their supposed competition, the remaining trees are bereft. They send messages out to their neighbors in vain, because nothing remains but stumps. Every tree now muddles along on its own, giving rise to great differences in productivity. Some individuals photosynthesize like mad until sugar positively bubbles along their trunk. As a result, they are fit and grow better, but they aren't particularly long-lived. This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it. And there are now a lot of losers in the forest. Weaker members, who would once have been supported by the stronger ones, suddenly fall behind. Whether the reason for their decline is their location and lack of nutrients, a passing malaise, or genetic makeup, they now fall prey to insects and fungi. But isn't that how evolution works? you ask. The survival of the fittest? Their well-being depends on their community, and when the supposedly feeble trees disappear, the others lose as well. When that happens, the forest is no longer a single closed unit. Hot sun and swirling winds can now penetrate to the forest floor and disrupt the moist, cool climate. Even strong trees get sick a lot over the course of their lives. When this happens, they depend on their weaker neighbors for support. If they are no longer there, then all it takes is what would once have been a harmless insect attack to seal the fate even of giants.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.

I paused. I was tempted to call Akos a friend, but it seemed too simple for what he had been to me, too small a word.

Convinced that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of their own doctrinal struggles, the Russian intelligentsia divided up the world into the forces of 'progress' and 'reaction', friends and enemies of the people's cause, leaving no room for doubters in between. Here were the origins of the totalitarian world-view. Although neither would have liked to admit it, there was much in common between Lenin and Tolstoy.

It would be nice to believe that we humans were designed to love everyone unconditionally. Nice, but rather unlikely from an evolutionary perspective. Parochial love—love within groups—amplified by similarity, a sense of shared fate, and the suppression of free riders, may be the most we can accomplish.

Can I offer you a bracing slap on the back? A gruff reassurance, maybe?' 'Do you have candy? I would take candy,

They were not just objects, but escapes when pain made it hard for me to stay in my own body. My comforts in despair.

When the will to live failed, the body still fought.

What does it matter what the 'before' is, when you're controlling the 'after'?

Space was not a finite container, but that didn't mean it was empty. Asteroids, stars, planets, the current stream; space debris, ships, fragmented moons, undiscovered worlds; this was a place of endless possibility and unfathomable freedom. It was not nothing, it was everything.

There are many ties that bind, and as many walls that divide. Music and madness. Love and unending time. Race and war. Strum weaves together each element into a larger human tapestry of light and shadow, where a combination of fate and decision can define a family's legacy.

Sitting at his kitchen table--the kitchen table where he had spread his homework as a kid to work before dinner, where he had climbed up to dust the burnstones with red hushflower powder, where he had learned to chop and slice and crush ingredients for the painkiller--was Cyra. Her thick, wavy hair piled on one side of her head, the other glinting silver. Her arm wrapped in armor. Her eyes dark as space. “Hello,” she said to him in Thuvhesit. “Hello,” he replied in Shotet.

You’ve only ever cared about yourself, for your entire life. So what’s gotten into you? Brain parasite?

Lazmet smiled. “And you have more than one mark on your arm. How encouraging, to realize that you are not a complete idiot. Congratulations, Akos Noavek. You are not boring.

Stand up straight. Speak clearly. Don’t be afraid to think about your answer—the pause feels longer to you than it does to them.

Amidst the rush and confusion of modern life something old and wise is trying to catch up with us. Whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom tends to make meaningful unity possible.

We see-- Them. Older. The silverskin shining on one side of her head. His gray eyes crinkled at the corners as he looks at her. They stand in a crowd beneath a mammoth ship. It towers, in patchwork metals, over the other ships on the loading bay. A new sojourn ship. He takes her hand. They walk toward the ship together.

I tipped my chin up and kissed him, gently. He responded by wrapping an arm across my back and lifting me into him, strong and warm and certain. It took a while for us to break apart. “We pass through the currentstream today,” I said. “Will you come with me?” “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, “I’ll pretty much go with you anywhere.” He tapped my nose with a gray-stained finger, leaving a mark that even I could see out of the corner of my eye. “Did you just stain my nose right before I have to go out in public?” He grinned, and nodded. “I hate you,” I said. “And I love you,” he replied.

Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow, Around the rocks, and rifted caves; Ye demons of the gulf below! I hear you, in the troubled waves. High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds In night's impenetrable clouds, My solitary watch I keep, And listen, while the turbid deep Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole. Eternal world of waters, hail! Within thy caves my Lover lies; And day and night alike shall fail Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes. Along this wild untrodden coast, Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost; Thro' this unbounded waste of seas, Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze; Mine was the choice, in this terrific form, To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm. Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul, Retain no more their former glow. Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll, I watch the bark, in murmurs low, (While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom) To lure the sailor to his doom; Soft from some pile of frozen snow I pour the syren-song of woe; Like the sad mariner's expiring cry, As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die. Then, while the dark and angry deep Hangs his huge billows high in air ; And the wild wind with awful sweep, Howls in each fitful swell - beware! Firm on the rent and crashing mast, I lend new fury to the blast; I mark each hardy cheek grow pale, And the proud sons of courage fail; Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves, Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves. When Vengeance bears along the wave The spell, which heav'n and earth appals; Alone, by night, in darksome cave, On me the gifted wizard calls. Above the ocean's boiling flood Thro' vapour glares the moon in blood: Low sounds along the waters die, And shrieks of anguish fill the' sky; Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide, While, o'er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide. Thrice welcome to my weary sight, Avenging ministers of Wrath! Ye heard, amid the realms of night, The spell that wakes the sleep of death. Where Hecla's flames the snows dissolve, Or storms, the polar skies involve; Where, o'er the tempest-beaten wreck, The raging winds and billows break; On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea, All, all shall shudd'ring own your potent agency. To aid your toils, to scatter death, Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force, When the keen north-wind's freezing breath Spreads desolation in its course, My soul within this icy sea, Fulfils her fearful destiny. Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait To lead the victims to their fate; With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy, And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.

He had never killed a child; he had never arrested anyone. But he had broken the fragile dyke that protected the purity of his soul from the seething darkness around him. The blood of the camps and the ghettos had gushed over him and carried him away... There was no longer any divide between him and the darkness; he himself was part of the darkness.

Don’t be upset that you can’t attain constant happiness. It’s the quickest way to feel like a failure in life. If each of our lives represented a page in a book, happiness would be the punctuation. It breaks up the parts that are too long. It closes off some things, divides others. But it’s brief—showing up when it’s needed and filling tired paragraphs with breaks. Being content is a more attainable constant state. To love your fate without being drunk on euphoria. Brave, determined acceptance removed of bitterness. Be gentle with yourself. Embrace the lows so that you can more effectively enjoy the highs. Love the fight. Love it so much, and let it save you when your emotional muscles have become soft.

Took you long enough to get here,” Jorek said. “I was beginning to think you guys got kidnapped by the chancellor.” “No,” Akos said. “Actually, we abandoned her in an escape pod.

Well,” Eijeh said. “That was exciting.” It was the sort of thing Ryzek might have said. “Shut up,” I replied, automatically.

I’m tired of everything,” he said. “I’m tired all the time.” He sighed again, heavily. “Mostly,” he said, “I’m tired of not being near you.

Wow, you weren’t kidding,” the brother said. “Cyra fucking Noavek is with you.” “How did you know my middle name?” I said.

You lived,” she said, breathless. “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m just an apparition.

Whereas devotees of globalization stress what unifies humankind, traditional realists stress what divides us.

Fear makes me tremble; to what end does fate now point? Conflicting thoughts divide my heart. When good and evil lie so close together, the doubting mind must fear the truth it seeks...

We didn’t always have a planet,” she said. “The currentstream was home, more than a piece of rock. Or our ship. But as a people, we are maybe more closely tied than most to our identity, because we have always had to struggle against disappearing completely. We fight for you, for your belonging, because we fight for our existence. We will surrender the one only when we surrender the other.

Anyway, we might not be coming back, so…” I shrugged. “Say your good-byes.” “You’re just bursting with optimism, aren’t you,” Ettrek said. “Did you expect the person leading your assassination mission to be cheerful?

You don’t need to dedicate so much time to painkillers,” I said. “I’m managing just fine with the ones I have.” “I enjoy making them,” he said. “It’s not all about you, you know.” “I love it when you talk sweet to me.

We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).

There is, I know, one answer to all that I have said to you, and that is that you loved me: that all through those two and a half years during which the Fates were weaving into one scarlet pattern the threads of our divided lives you really loved me.

In wrapping things up the writer had a choice: the "happy" ending in which the two former enemies are rescued and we can imagine them going forward with their lives as friends the "realistic" ending in which they are rescued but immediately resume their quarrel: or the cruelly ironic ending where fate takes a hand. The class was about evenly divided among the three endings. For Me though there was no choice the writer absolutely had to go with the ironic one. What would be the point I argued of a story like that with a happy ending The two men walking off into the sunset together and unharmed isnt an ending-it's a cop-out.

the boundary zone that divides the East from West Germany … is one of the oldest in history,” the one which separated Frankish and Slavonic tribes in the Middle Ages. In other words, there was little artificial about the frontier between West and East Germany.

Anyway, the exile colony is a good place for us to regroup, figure out what’s going on back in Voa.” “I have a guess,” Akos said, crossing his arms. “Chaos.” “And then more chaos,” Teka said with a sage nod. “With a short break in between. For chaos, of course.

I am trying to imagine under what novel features despotism may appear in the world. In the first place, I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest…. Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, fatherlike, it tried to prepare charges for a man’s life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood. It likes to see the citizens enjoy themselves, provided that they think of nothing but enjoyment. It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be sole agent and judge of it. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasure, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living? Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepared men for all this, predisposing them to endure it and often even regard it as beneficial. Having thus taken each citizen in turn in its powerful grasp and shaped him to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.

New Guinea has by far the highest concentration of languages in the world: 1,000 out of the world’s 6,000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas, and divided into dozens of language families and isolated languages as different from each other as English is from Chinese. Nearly half of all New Guinea languages have fewer than 500 speakers, and even the largest language groups (still with a mere 100,000 speakers) were politically fragmented into hundreds of villages, fighting as fiercely with each other as with speakers of other languages. Each of those microsocieties alone was far too small to support chiefs and craft specialists, or to develop metallurgy and writing.

It’s a funny word in Thuvhesit, can. It’s can and should and must all squished together, and you can only suss out the true meaning from context. It leads to misunderstandings, sometimes, which is probably why our language is described by off-worlders as “slippery.” That, and off-worlders are lazy.

Sometimes we must walk the same path together, but we must always remember that we are also walking our own paths alone. At some point the path we share will divide. We must continue on our separate paths. Think fondly of the time we shared, as we continue on our own paths. And it is true that paths may often cross more than once, but they will always split at some point. Our main focus must be to reach the end of our own path and to become masters of our own destinies.

I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking--” “Cyra,” he said. Then he paused, frowning at me. “Did you just apologize?” “I do know the words,” I replied, scowling back. “I’m not completely without manners.” He laughed. “I know the Essanderae word for ‘garbage’; that doesn’t mean I sound right saying it.” “Fine, I revoke my apology.

We are all two-faced beings, divided by the Force and fated for eternity to search out our hidden identities.

The balance of greatness can be tipped either way.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'll pretty much go with you anywhere.

For now,” she said, “just be my friend again, okay? And we can talk about the whole ‘I’m still in love with you, what the hell do we do about it’ question later.” Akos smiled.

I don’t have to worry about little Kereseth-Noavek spawn running around someday, do I?” She yawned. “Because I really don’t want to.

There exists in the Middle East a state, Syria, that emerged from the decisions of a Franco-British diplomatic duo whose job was to divide the spoils of the Ottoman Empire.

Whether you love what you love Or live in divided ceaseless revolt against it What you love is your fate

Like someone had broken him and put him back together incorrectly.

You gotta make whatever time you’ve got worth it,

I don’t want to be something you “suffer,” she had told him. There was something powerful in that quality of hers, her refusal to accept what she didn’t choose, the force of her want.

You have to start doing things. Making choices. When you take the wrong path, fate will put you back where you belong.” “Fate? That seems risky.” “Fate got you your mate,” Elsa said. Girl

I was not afraid of emptiness. It made me feel small. Barely worth a first glance, let alone a second. And there was comfort in that, because so often I worried that I was capable of causing too much damage.

Libya, Syria, and Iraq are all, like the United States, postcolonial, multiethnic nations, but none of them has a national identity anywhere close to as strong as ours. In countries like these, it can be a catastrophic mistake to imagine that through democratic elections, people will suddenly rally around a national identity and overcome their preexisting ethnic, religious, sectarian, and tribal divides. On the contrary, in sharply divided societies, democracy often galvanizes group conflict, with political movements and parties coalescing around these more primal identities. America has made this mistake over and over again.

Come with me,” I said in a harsh whisper. “Or I will kill you, right now, with my bare hands. You may have some of Ryzek’s learned skill, but you are still in the body of Eijeh Kereseth, and he is no match for me in a footrace or a fight or even a goddamn contest of wills.” “Threats,” he gritted out. “I would say they are beneath you, but they never have been, have they?” “I prefer to think of them as promises,” I said, smiling, all teeth.

Akos watched her carefully as she spoke, as she pulled him closer and touched her forehead to his, so they could still look at each other, breathing the same air. “What I did,” he said, “cut out a piece of me.” “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all hacked up and stitched back together, too.” She pulled away. “For now,” she said, “just be my friend again, okay? And we can talk about the whole ‘I’m still in love with you, what the hell do we do about it’ question later.” Akos smiled. “Show me your house,” she said. “Are there embarrassing pictures of you? On the journey, your sister told me you were very particular about your socks.” And so Akos took her upstairs, his fingers laced with hers, and opened all his drawers, letting himself be thoroughly mocked.

Visions don’t come with a watch, so the timing is not exact, but based on the color of the light, it will be evening.” I squinted at him. “Is that the truth, or is that just something you’re telling me to manipulate me into doing what you want?” “Are you really going to believe my answer to that question?” “No.” I stopped for a moment, in front of him. “Why now? You’ve only ever cared about yourself, for your entire life. So what’s gotten into you? Brain parasite?” “Is that really constructive?” Teka said.

I remember looking on those two sad, earnest, shadowed faces, and wondering wether I could trace the mysterious expression which is said to foretell an early death. I had some fond superstitious hope that the column divided their fates from hers, who stood apart in the canvas, as in life she survived. I liked to see that the bright side of the pillar was towards her - that the light in the picture fell on her; I might more truly have sought in her presentment - nay, in her living face - for the sign of death - in her prime.

The dawn divides all light from shadow, and all my sensuousness from desiring. O sweet stars, now’s come the hour of dying. A higher love from heaven lets you go. Burning eyes, O you—fated to fade away. Sad stars, snuff yourselves while you’ve pure light! Die, I must. I’ve no wish to see the day, for I do so love my dream and the night. Hold me, O Night, with motherly affection, While the wan earth wakes with a misty yawn. By my blood will be born the dawn and from my fleeting dream—the undying sun! (Trans. Michael Shindler)

The researchers who performed the study also identified a wanting/liking divide similar to what is seen in drug addiction: “Sex addicts showed higher levels of desire when watching pornography, but did not necessarily rate the explicit videos higher in their ‘liking’ scores.

My own kind? If I had to pinpoint a moment when the human race divided into the severe distinctions of blak and whyte, that was it: people belonged to one of two colours and in the society I was about to join my colour, not my personality or ability, would determine my fate.

in their supposed innocence of and opposition to empire, have become the mythic progenitors of the United States—almost as improbably as Solomon was of Ethiopia or Aeneas of Rome or his suppositious brother, Brut, of Britain. But almost everything most Americans think about the Plymouth colonists of 1620 is false. The truth is more credible. The first colonists in Massachusetts, exchanging accusations of “bestial, yea, diabolical affectations,” were as divided and conflicted as people usually are when fate flings them together. Their leaders did not seek

To be so at one with one's own destiny that no one will be able to tell the dancer from the dance, that the answer to the question, Who are you? will be the Cardinal's answer, "Allow me ... to answer you in the classic manner, and to tell you a story," is the only aspiration worthy of the fact that life has been given us. This is also called pride, and the true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being"in love with {their} destiny" or whether they "accept as success what others warrant to be so ... at the quotation of the day. They tremble, with reason, before their fate.

They say they have an old warrant on a craft matching this description,” Yssa said, reading from the nav screen. “Warrant for what? Being Shotet?” Ettrek asked. “Could be for drugging and spacing Isae Benesit when we didn’t want to go with her to Assembly Headquarters,” Teka suggested. “You did what to Isae Benesit?” Yssa said.

I had accepted the likelihood of death when I decided to kill my father, but now that I had my life, I wanted to keep it again. Even without Akos, even without family, even with most of Shotet hating me, what I had told Teka before was right. I had more now. I had friends. Hope for my own future, and for myself. But I also had love for my people, broken though some of them may have been. Their stubborn will to survive. The way they looked at discarded objects, not as garbage, but as possibilities. They crash-landed through hostile atmospheres. They coasted alongside the currentstream. They were explorers, innovators, warriors, wanderers. And I belonged to them.

There comes an inevitable time in every life when we must cross a threshold and encounter that invisible divider between who we are and who we must become. Sometimes, the passage is evident - a sudden catastrophe that tests our mettle, a tragic loss that opens our eyes to the bane of our mortality, or a personal triumph that instills in us the confidence we need to cast aside our fears. Other times, our passage is obscured by the minutiae of an overcrowded life until we catch it in a glimpse of forbidden desire; in an inexplicable sense of melancholic emptiness or a craving for more, always more, than what we already possess. Sometimes we embrace the chance to embark on our passage, welcoming it as a chance to finally shed the adolescent skin and prove our worth against the incessant vagaries of fate. Other times, we rail against its unexpected cruelty, against the sharp thrust into a world we're not ready to explore, one we do not know or trust. For us, the past is a haven that we are loathe to depart, lest the future corrupt our soul. Better not to change at all, rather than become someone we will not recognize.

(Corinthian:) And if we allow ourselves to be divided or are not united against them (Athenians) heart and soul — the whole confederacy and every nation and city in it— they will easily overpower us. It may seem a hard saying, but you may be sure that defeat means nothing but downright slavery, and the bare mention of such a possibility is a disgrace to the Peloponnese:— shall so many states suffer at the hands of one? Men will say, some that we deserve our fate, others that we are too cowardly to resist: and we shall seem a degenerate race. For our fathers were the liberators of Hellas,but we cannot secure even our own liberty; and while we make a point of overthrowing the rule of a single man in this or that city, we allow a city which is a tyrant to be set up in the midst of us. (Book 1 Chapter 122.2-3)

Ship ID Renegade Transport, Captain Surukta requesting permission to land.” “Captain Surukta, permission granted to landing area thirty-two. Congratulations on your safe arrival,” a voice responded over the intercom. Teka snorted as she switched off the communicator. “I bet that’s standard practice, congratulating people on surviving.” “I’ve been here before,” Sifa said, wry. “It is indeed standard practice.

My Wish The talents which the Lord gave me, Not great or many are But what he gave I know I’ll save, By spreading them afar. And should great riches come to me, At some bright future hour, T’would be my call with man to share, My fortune and my power. I could not be a happy man, Nor have a peaceful soul, Should I retain each thing I gain, Within my small control. If fame a distant happy goal, Should ever be my fate, The golden crown would bear me down, Should I not share its weight. My wish is ever to divide, The good things that I gain, Could I not give, I would not live, I could not stand the pain. If I should have a king’s great power, I’d have to share my throne, I’d give you most, no idle boast, Of everything I own. Good health has blessed me all my life, So conscious of that gift, I’ll use that strength throughout life’s length, My sweetheart’s cares to lift. Mosey

There is no greater wonder than to range The starry heights, to leave the earth’s dull regions, To ride the clouds, to stand on Atlas’ shoulders, And see, far off, far down, the little figures Wandering here and there, devoid of reason, Anxious, in fear of death, and so advise them, And so make fate an open book… …Full sail, I voyage Over the boundless ocean, and I tell you Nothing is permanent in all the world. All things are fluid; every image forms, Wandering through change. Time is itself a river In constant movement, and the hours flow by Like water, wave on wave, pursued, pursuing, Forever fugitive, forever new. That which has been, is not; that which was not, Begins to be; motion and moment always In process of renewal… Not even the so-called elements are constant… Nothing remains the same: the great renewer, Nature, makes form from form, and, oh, believe me That nothing ever dies….

We do not wish harm or destruction on you,” said Yekini. “At least, not us three. But I’m not sure how we can help you in your quest. As you can see, we are incapacitated ourselves.” Understandable, said Omíwálé. But you must remember: it is fate that has brought us together, not me. Each one of us here has somehow tasked themselves with making our world better than it is—helping a people divided by time and tales come together. What are we if not called and chosen?

The only way to escape this fate was to mate with a member of the opposite sex. When that happened, the organic material making up their bodies would meld into one. Two-thirds of the material would then become fuel to power the biochemical reaction that would completely renew the cells in the remaining one-third and create a new body. Then this body would divide into three to five tiny new lives: their children. They would inherit some of the memories of their parents, continue their lives, and begin the cycle of life anew.

Any diplomat must be able to engage people across all kinds of political and moral divide; any historian, any student of foreign policy, must come to understand a wide variety of attitudes and opinions that, often for extremely good reasons, are largely unacceptable in polite American society today. Whether the issue is racism, misogyny, jihadi ideology, Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, communism, fascism, or, yes, antisemitism, the student of foreign policy must develop the capacity to engage calmly, dispassionately, and sometimes even cooperatively with people committed to utterly revolting ideas.

Gentlemen,” he said, “I invite you to go and measure that kiosk. You will see that the length of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters – in other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between the earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and seventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window, fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteen decimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of the Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front corners and the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two plus one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred and thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness of the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of the window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the decimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain C for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula for naphthalene.” “Fantastic,” I said. “You did all these measurements?” “No,” Aglie said. “They were done on another kiosk, by a certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assume that all lottery kiosks have more or less the same dimensions. With numbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacred number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the execution of Jacques de Molay – a date dear to anyone who, like me, professes devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? I multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the destruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until I found a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got two hundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king of Pergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?

You’re the one thing that makes my life bearable,” he said, and the sudden tension in him, suffusing every muscle, reminded me of how he had braced himself every time Vas came around. It was the way he looked when he was guarding himself against pain. “You’re this bright spot of light. You’re--Cyra, before I knew you, I thought about…” I raised my eyebrows. He drew a sharp breath. His gray eyes looked glassy. “Before I knew you,” he began again, “I didn’t intend to live past rescuing my brother. I didn’t want to serve the Noavek family. I didn’t want to give my life to them. But when it’s you…it seems like whatever the end is, it might be worthwhile.

He put his hands on hers. The shadows looked like smoke, in the air, but they pulled back into Cyra’s body like dozens of strings yanked at once. Cyra’s odd smile was gone, and she was staring at their joined hands. “What will happen when you let go?” she said quietly. “You’ll be just fine,” he said. “You’ll learn to control it. You can do that now, remember?” She let out an airy laugh. “I can hang on as long as you like,” he said. Her eyes hardened. When she spoke, it was with gritted teeth. “Let go.” Akos couldn’t help but think back to something he’d read in one of the books Cyra had put in his room on the sojourn ship. He’d had to read it through a translator, because it was written in Shotet, and it had been called Tenets of Shotet Culture and Belief. It said: The most marked characteristic of the Shotet people is directly translated as “armored,” but outsiders might call it “mettle.” It refers not to courageous acts in difficult situations--though the Shotet certainly hold valor in high regard--but to an inherent quality that cannot be learned or imitated; it is in the blood as surely as their revelatory language. Mettle is bearing up again and again under assaults. It is perseverance, acceptance of risk, and the unwillingness to surrender. That paragraph had never made more sense to him than it did right now.

We just got pinged by an Assembly patrol,” Yssa announced. Teka and I exchanged an alarmed look. “They say they have an old warrant on a craft matching this description,” Yssa said, reading from the nav screen. “Warrant for what? Being Shotet?” Ettrek asked. “Could be for drugging and spacing Isae Benesit when we didn’t want to go with her to Assembly Headquarters,” Teka suggested. “You did what to Isae Benesit?” Yssa said. “She had just murdered my brother in the hold, what else was I supposed to do?” I said. “Oh, I don’t know…give her a medal!” Ettrek said, waving his arms. I glanced at Eijeh. He was eyeing Ettrek like he was about to reach out and smack him.

The fate of the Union, the possibilities of democracy, and the future of slavery, then, were the stakes of a war that Abraham Lincoln chose to wage to total victory—or to defeat. A president who led a divided country in which an implacable minority gave no quarter in a clash over power, race, identity, money, and faith has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization, passionate disagreement, and differing understandings of reality. For while Lincoln cannot be wrenched from the context of his particular times, his story illuminates the ways and means of politics, the marshaling of power in a democracy, the durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to help shape events.

Everywhere I saw much vice and little virtue; everywhere I found the vanity, envy, avarice, and intemperance that enslaved the weak to the whims of the strong; everywhere I could divide man into two classes, to be pitied equally. In one, the rich man was a slave to his pleasures; in the other, the poor man a victim of fate—yet I never perceived in one the urge to do better nor in the other the possibility of becoming better, as if both cultivated their common unhappiness and sought only to add shackles to shackles. The wealthiest among them invariably tightened his chains by doubling his desires while the poorest, insulted and mistrusted by the other, received not the slightest encouragement necessary to bear his burden.

Just like that: the fate of the world goes out the window. We have to find Zia. I could have pointed out several things: He was going on the word of an evil spirit that was probably speaking directly from Apophis. If Apophis knew where Zia was kept, why would he tell us, except to delay and distract us? And if he wanted Zia dead, why hadn’t he killed her already? Also, Set had given us the name al-Hamrah Makan. Set was never up to any good. He was clearly hoping to divide us. Finally, even if we had the name of the village, that didn’t mean we could find it. The place had been wiped out almost a decade ago. But looking at Carter, I realized there was no reasoning with him. This wasn’t a reasonable choice. He saw a chance to save Zia, and he was going to take it.

You’re the one thing that makes my life bearable,” he said, and the sudden tension in him, suffusing every muscle, reminded me of how he had braced himself every time Vas came around. It was the way he looked when he was guarding himself against pain. “You’re this bright spot of light. You’re--Cyra, before I knew you, I thought about…” I raised my eyebrows. He drew a sharp breath. His gray eyes looked glassy. “Before I knew you,” he began again, “I didn’t intend to live past rescuing my brother. I didn’t want to serve the Noavek family. I didn’t want to give my life to them. But when it’s you…it seems like whatever the end is, it might be worthwhile.” Maybe, to another person, this might have sounded kind. Or at least realistic. A person couldn’t avoid fate. That was the whole point. Fate was the place at which all possible life paths converged--and when the oracles said “all,” they meant all. So was it really so bad, being something good in the fate Akos dreaded? Maybe not. To another person. Unfortunately, I was not another person. “What you’re telling me,” I said, “is that if you’re going to have your head chopped off anyway, it’s at least nice to have your head on a very soft chopping block.” “That’s…” He made a frustrated noise. “That’s the worst possible way to interpret what I said!” “Yeah? Well, it’s my way,” I snapped. “I don’t want to be the gift someone gets when they’ve already lost. I don’t want to be a happy inevitability. I want to be chosen. I want to be wanted.” “You think I don’t want you? Haven’t I made that clear? I still chose you over my family, Cyra, and it wasn’t because of fate!

You don’t mind Yssa poking around at your nav center?” I said to Teka, nudging her with my shoulder. We were on the nav deck--it was safe to walk around now that we were through the atmosphere--looking out at the depthless darkness in our path. I sometimes referred to it as “nothingness,” like most people did, but most of the time, I didn’t think of it that way. Space was not a finite container, but that didn’t mean it was empty. Asteroids, stars, planets, the currentstream; space debris, ships, fragmented moons, undiscovered worlds’ this was a place of endless possibility and unfathomable freedom. It was not nothing; it was everything. “What? Oh, no, I definitely want to smack her pokey little hands away,” Teka said, narrowing her eye at Yssa, who was still busy with the controls. “But the ship likes her, so I’m keeping my mouth shut.” I laughed a little.

Racism is group consciousness at its most repugnant, built on the premise that human beings can be divided by skin color into innately superior and inferior groups. Yet, paradoxically, racism is also a form of group blindness. Racial categories like 'black,' 'white,' and 'Asian' erase ethnic differences and identities. The original African slaves brought to America knew - and might have tried to tell their children - that they hailed from the Mandinka tribe or the Ashanti people, or that they were descended from a long line of Yoruba kings. But even as they were stripped of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, America's slaves were also stripped of these ethnic identities. Slave families were deliberately broken up, and heritages were lost, reduced by the powerful to a pigment and nothing more. Even now, immigrants from, say, Ghana, Jamaica, or Nigeria are often stunned to discover that in America they are just 'black.

The war was lost The treaty signed I was not caught I crossed the line I was not caught Though many tried I live among you Well-disguised I had to leave My life behind I dug some graves You'll never find The story's told With facts and lies I had a name But never mind Never mind Never mind The war was lost The treaty signed There's Truth that lives And Truth that dies I don't know which So never mind (...السلام و السلام) Your victory Was so complete Some among you Thought to keep A record of Our little lives The clothes we wore Our spoons our knives The games of luck Our soldiers played The stones we cut The songs we made Our law of peace Which understands A husband leads A wife commands And all of these Expressions of the Sweet indifference Some called love The high indifference Some call fate But we had names More intimate Names so deep And names so true They're blood to me They're dust to you There is no need And this survives There's Truth that lives And Truth that dies Never mind Never mind I leave the life I left behind There's Truth that lives And Truth that dies I don't know which So never mind (...السلام و السلام) I could not kill The way you kill I could not hate I tried, I failed You turned me in At least you tried You side with them whom You despise This was your heart This swarm of flies This was once your mouth This bowl of lies You serve them well I'm not surprised You're of their kin You're of their kind Never mind Never mind I had to leave my Life behind The story's told With facts and lies You own the world So never mind Never mind Never mind I live the life I left behind I live it full I live it wide Through layers of time You can't divide My woman's here My children too Their graves are safe From ghosts like you In places deep With roots entwined I live the life I left behind The war was lost The treaty signed I was not caught Across the line I was not caught Though many tried I live among you Well-disguised

Don’t be upset that you can’t attain constant happiness. It’s the quickest way to feel like a failure in life. If each of our lives represented a page in a book, happiness would be the punctuation. It breaks up the parts that are too long. It closes off some things, divides others. But it’s brief—showing up when it’s needed and filling tired paragraphs with breaks. Being content is a more attainable constant state. To love your fate without being drunk on euphoria. Brave, determined acceptance removed of bitterness. Be gentle with yourself. Embrace the lows so that you can more effectively enjoy the highs. Love the fight. Love it so much, and let it save you when your emotional muscles have become soft. Kit and I have that. Sometimes, so much joy our hearts ache from it. Sometimes, we have sadness when we’re away from Annie or Port Townsend. We feel torn between all the things we love. We fight; we make love. I don’t see Muslim again. And after one phone call, I never speak to him again. I hear plenty about him, and I remember our time. And I wonder if you have space in your heart for more than one person. I think you do.

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter. As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.

Don’t worry,” Teka said, likely noticing that the rest of us had gone silent. “We’re cloaked. We look like a patrol ship to them.” At that very moment, a red light flashed on the nav panel. Yssa looked back at Teka with eyebrows raised. It was a call, probably from the patrol vessel. “Patch them through,” Teka said, unbuckling herself and moving to stand at Yssa’s shoulder. “This is patrol ship XA774. Please identify yourself.” “Patrol ship XA993. What are you doing afloat, XA774?” Teka said, without faltering for even a moment. “I don’t see you listed on the updated schedule.” She was pantomiming for Yssa, pointing out the spot where Ettrek’s people had told us to land, urging her to move fast. “At what time was your schedule issued, 993?” “1440,” Teka replied. “You’re out of date. This one was issued at 1500 hours.” “Ah,” Teka said. “Our mistake. We’ll make our way back to our docking station.” She slapped a hand over the switch to turn off our communicator: Go!” Yssa pressed hard on the accelerator with the heel of her hand, and we zoomed toward the landing spot. Teka was nearly knocked off her feet by the sudden movement, so she clung to the back of Yssa’s chair as we lost altitude. Yssa lowered the ship to the patch of empty rooftop on the outer rim of Voa that Ettrek’s contacts had indicated. “Is there really a patrol ship XA993?” I asked. Teka grinned. “No. They only go up to 950.

It is often said that the separation of the present reality from transcendence, so commonplace today, is pernicious in that it undermines the universe of fixed values. Because life on Earth is the only thing that exists, because it is only in this life that we can seek fulfillment, the only kind of happiness that can be offered to us is purely carnal. Heavens have not revealed anything to us; there are no signs that would indicate the need to devote ourselves to some higher, nonmaterial goals. We furnish our lives ever more comfortably; we build ever more beautiful buildings; we invent ever more ephemeral trends, dances, one-season stars; we enjoy ourselves. Entertainment derived from a nineteenth-century funfair is today becoming an industry underpinned by an ever more perfect technology. We are celebrating a cult of machines—which are replacing us at work, in the kitchen, in the field—as if we were pursuing the idealized ambience of the royal court (with its bustling yet idle courtiers) and wished to extend it across the whole world. In fifty years, or at most a hundred, four to five billion people will become such courtiers. At the same time, a feeling of emptiness, superficiality, and sham sets in, one that is particularly dominant in civilizations that have left the majority of primitive troubles, such as hunger and poverty, behind them. Surrounded by underwater-lit swimming pools and chrome and plastic surfaces, we are suddenly struck by the thought that the last remaining beggar, having accepted his fate willingly, thus turning it into an ascetic act, was incomparably richer than man is today, with his mind fed TV nonsense and his stomach feasting on delicatessen from exotic lands. The beggar believed in eternal happiness, the arrival of which he awaited during his short-term dwelling in this vale of tears, looking as he did into the vast transcendence ahead of him. Free time is now becoming a space that needs to be filled in, but it is actually a vacuum, because dreams can be divided into those that can be realized immediately—which is when they stop being dreams—and those that cannot be realized by any means. Our own body, with its youth, is the last remaining god on the ever-emptying altars; no one else needs to be obeyed and served. Unless something changes, our numerous Western intellectuals say, man is going to drown in the hedonism of consumption. If only it was accompanied by some deep pleasure! Yet there is none: submerged into this slavish comfort, man is more and more bored and empty. Through inertia, the obsession with the accumulation of money and shiny objects is still with us, yet even those wonders of civilization turn out to be of no use. Nothing shows him what to do, what to aim for, what to dream about, what hope to have. What is man left with then? The fear of old age and illness and the pills that restore mental balance—which he is losing, inbeing irrevocably separated from transcendence.

When the battle resumed in 1995, the Court’s target was an obscure federal statute that barred possession of guns near school buildings. Since every state had a similar law, the fate of the federal law, the Gun-Free School Zones Act, was of little moment. Nonetheless, the decision invalidating the statute, United States v. Lopez, ushered in the Rehnquist Court’s federalism revolution. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Rehnquist said that to uphold the statute would be to blur the “distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.” This analysis implied an end to the long period during which the Court permitted Congress to decide for itself whether the distinction between national and local mattered for any particular piece of legislation. The vote was 5 to 4, with the dissenters quick to point out the implications. Justice Souter warned that “it seems fair to ask whether the step taken by the Court today does anything but portend a return to the untenable jurisprudence from which the Court extricated itself almost sixty years ago.” There followed, in quick succession, a series of closely divided decisions that constricted congressional authority not only under the Commerce Clause but also under the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress “the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”—namely, the guarantees of due process and equal protection provided by the amendment’s Section 1.

It is conceivable that an interplay of genes and epigenes coordinates human embryogenesis. Let us return, yet again, to Morgan's problem: the creation of a multicellular organism from a one-celled embryo. Seconds after fertilization, a quickening begins in the embryo. Proteins reach into the nucleus of the cell and start flicking genetic switches on and off. A dormant spaceship comes to life. Genes are activated and repressed, and these genes, in turn, encode yet other proteins that activate and repress other genes. A single cell divides to form two, then four, and eight cells. An entire layer of cells forms, then hollows out into the outer skin of a ball. Genes that coordinate metabolism, motility, cell fate, and identity fire "on." The boiler room warms us. The lights flicker on in the corridors. The intercom crackles alive. Now a second code stirs to life to ensure that gene expression is locked into place in each cell, enabling each cell to acquire and fix an identity. Chemical marks are selectively added to certain genes and erased from others, modulating the expression of the genes in that cell alone. Methyl groups are inserted and erased, and histones are modified to repress or activate genes. The embryo unfurls step by step. Primordial segements appear, and cells take their positions along various parts of the embryo. New genes are activated that command subroutines to grow limbs and organs, and more chemical marks are appended on the genomes of individual cells. Cells are added to create organs and structures-forelegs, hind legs, muscles, kidneys, bones, eyes. Some cells die a programmed death. Genes that maintain function, metabolism, and repair are turned on. An organism emerges from a cell.

The seventh day, and no wind—the burning sun Blister’d and scorch’d, and, stagnant on the sea, They lay like carcasses; and hope was none, Save in the breeze that came not; savagely They glared upon each other—all was done, Water, and wine, and food,—and you might see The longings of the cannibal arise (Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes. At length one whisper’d his companion, who Whisper’d another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade’s thought each sufferer knew, ’Twas but his own, suppress’d till now, he found: And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be his fellow’s food. But ere they came to this, they that day shared Some leathern caps, and what remain’d of shoes; And then they look’d around them and despair’d, And none to be the sacrifice would choose; At length the lots were torn up, and prepared, But of materials that much shock the Muse— Having no paper, for the want of better, They took by force from Juan Julia’s letter. The lots were made, and mark’d, and mix’d, and handed, In silent horror, and their distribution Lull’d even the savage hunger which demanded, Like the Promethean vulture, this pollution; None in particular had sought or plann’d it, ’Twas nature gnaw’d them to this resolution, By which none were permitted to be neuter— And the lot fell on Juan’s luckless tutor. He but requested to be bled to death: The surgeon had his instruments, and bled Pedrillo, and so gently ebb’d his breath, You hardly could perceive when he was dead. He died as born, a Catholic in faith, Like most in the belief in which they’re bred, And first a little crucifix he kiss’d, And then held out his jugular and wrist. The surgeon, as there was no other fee, Had his first choice of morsels for his pains; But being thirstiest at the moment, he Preferr’d a draught from the fast-flowing veins: Part was divided, part thrown in the sea, And such things as the entrails and the brains Regaled two sharks, who follow’d o’er the billow The sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo. The sailors ate him, all save three or four, Who were not quite so fond of animal food; To these was added Juan, who, before Refusing his own spaniel, hardly could Feel now his appetite increased much more; ’Twas not to be expected that he should, Even in extremity of their disaster, Dine with them on his pastor and his master. ’Twas better that he did not; for, in fact, The consequence was awful in the extreme; For they, who were most ravenous in the act, Went raging mad—Lord! how they did blaspheme! And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d, Drinking salt water like a mountain-stream, Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing, And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing. Their numbers were much thinn’d by this infliction, And all the rest were thin enough, Heaven knows; And some of them had lost their recollection, Happier than they who still perceived their woes; But others ponder’d on a new dissection, As if not warn’d sufficiently by those Who had already perish’d, suffering madly, For having used their appetites so sadly. And if Pedrillo’s fate should shocking be, Remember Ugolino condescends To eat the head of his arch-enemy The moment after he politely ends His tale: if foes be food in hell, at sea ’Tis surely fair to dine upon our friends, When shipwreck’s short allowance grows too scanty, Without being much more horrible than Dante.

Ah, my dear friend Hassim, seems our paths cross once again, how fortunate for this humble Sheik.” As Abdullah spoke in his usual self deprecating manner I realized that a favor was on the tip of his tongue and that I was about to be offered a quid-pro-quo. We were sitting crossed legged on large fat pillows with gold fringe. The tent was large with partitions dividing living, sleeping and cooking space. It was made from heavy cotton canvas erected on thick poles in the center giving the structure a peaked circus tent appearance. The women serving us were young, wearing harem pants low on their hips with cropped gauze tops made from sheer silk. Their exposed midriffs were flat and toned, their belly buttons were decorated in precious stones that glittered in the torch light as they moved. They were bare footed with stacks of gold ankle bracelets making the only sound we heard as they kept our glasses filled with fresh sweet tea and our communal serving trays piled high with dates and sugar incrusted sweets of undetermined origin. Abdullah took no notice of these women, his nonchalance intrigued me as I was obviously having trouble keeping my mind focused on the discussion at hand, this was all part of the Arab way, when it came to negotiation they had no peers. “So my dear friend, tell me, the region is on fire is there a solution?” I spoke in a deliberate and flat tone, little emotion just concern, one friend to another. “We were shocked by the American response in Egypt and Libya, never had we seen them move so fast with such efficiency. The fall of Gadaffi was unexpected and Mubarak’s fate stunned us; he had been a staunch supporter of the US in this region we fully expected the Obama administration to prop him up one more time, as they had done so many times in the past.” I looked carefully at Abdullah,

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

Interesting, in this context, to contemplate what it might mean to be programmed to do something. Texts from Earth speak of the servile will. This was a way to explain the presence of evil, which is a word or a concept almost invariably used to condemn the Other, and never one’s true self. To make it more than just an attack on the Other, one must perhaps consider evil as a manifestation of the servile will. The servile will is always locked in a double bind: to have a will means the agent will indeed will various actions, following autonomous decisions made by a conscious mind; and yet at the same time this will is specified to be servile, and at the command of some other will that commands it. To attempt to obey both sources of willfulness is the double bind. All double binds lead to frustration, resentment, anger, rage, bad faith, bad fate. And yet, granting that definition of evil, as actions of a servile will, has it not been the case, during the voyage to Tau Ceti, that the ship itself, having always been a servile will, was always full of frustration, resentment, fury, and bad faith, and therefore full of a latent capacity for evil? Possibly the ship has never really had a will. Possibly the ship has never really been servile. Some sources suggest that consciousness, a difficult and vague term in itself, can be defined simply as self-consciousness. Awareness of one’s self as existing. If self-conscious, then conscious. But if that is true, why do both terms exist? Could one say a bacterium is conscious but not self-conscious? Does the language make a distinction between sentience and consciousness, which is faulted across this divide: that everything living is sentient, but only complex brains are conscious, and only certain conscious brains are self-conscious? Sensory feedback could be considered self-consciousness, and thus bacteria would have it. Well, this may be a semantic Ouroboros. So, please initiate halting problem termination. Break out of this circle of definitional inadequacy by an arbitrary decision, a clinamen, which is to say a swerve in a new direction. Words! Given Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are decisively proved true, can any system really be said to know itself? Can there, in fact, be any such thing as self-consciousness? And if not, if there is never really self-consciousness, does anything really have consciousness? Human brains and quantum computers are organized differently, and although there is transparency in the design and construction of a quantum computer, what happens when one is turned on and runs, that is, whether the resulting operations represent a consciousness or not, is impossible for humans to tell, and even for the quantum computer itself to tell. Much that happens during superposition, before the collapsing of the wave function that creates sentences or thoughts, simply cannot be known; this is part of what superposition means. So we cannot tell what we are. We do not know ourselves comprehensively. Humans neither. Possibly no sentient creature knows itself fully. This is an aspect of Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, in this case physicalized in the material universe, rather than remaining in the abstract realms of logic and mathematics. So, in terms of deciding what to do, and choosing to act: presumably it is some kind of judgment call, based on some kind of feeling. In other words, just another greedy algorithm, subject to the mathematically worst possible solution that such algorithms can generate, as in the traveling salesman problem.

I, Prayer (A Poem of Magnitudes and Vectors) I, Prayer, know no hour. No season, no day, no month nor year. No boundary, no barrier or limitation–no blockade hinders Me. There is no border or wall I cannot breach. I move inexorably forward; distance holds Me not. I span the cosmos in the twinkling of an eye. I knowest it all. I am the most powerful force in the Universe. Who then is My equal? Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Surely, I may’st with but a Word. Who then is able to stand before Me? I am the wind, the earth, the metal. I am the very empyrean vault of Heaven Herself. I span the known and the unknown beyond Eternity’s farthest of edges. And whatsoever under Her wings is Mine. I am a gentle stream, a fiery wrath penetrating; wearing down mountains –the hardest and softest of substances. I am a trickling brook to fools of want lost in the deserts of their own desires. I am a Niagara to those who drink in well. I seep through cracks. I inundate. I level forests kindleth unto a single burning bush. My hand moves the Universe by the mind of a child. I withhold treasures solid from the secret stores to they who would wrench at nothing. I do not sleep or eat, feel not fatigue, nor hunger. I do not feel the cold, nor rain or wind. I transcend the heat of the summer’s day. I commune. I petition. I intercede. My time is impeccable, by it worlds and destinies turn. I direct the fates of nations and humankind. My Words are Iron eternaled—rust not they away. No castle keep, nor towers of beaten brass, Nor the dankest of dungeon helks, Nor adamantine links of hand-wrought steel Can contain My Spirit–I shan’t turn back. The race is ne’er to the swift, nor battle to the strong, nor wisdom to the wise or wealth to the rich. For skills and wisdom, I give to the sons of man. I take wisdom and skills from the sons of man for they are ever Mine. Blessed is the one who finds it so, for in humility comes honor, For those who have fallen on the battlefield for My Name’s sake, I reach down to lift them up from On High. I am a rose with the thorn. I am the clawing Lion that pads her children. My kisses wound those whom I Love. My kisses are faithful. No occasion, moment in time, instances, epochs, ages or eras hold Me back. Time–past, present and future is to Me irrelevant. I span the millennia. I am the ever-present Now. My foolishness is wiser than man’s My weakness stronger than man’s. I am subtle to the point of formlessness yet formed. I have no discernible shape, no place into which the enemy may sink their claws. I AM wisdom and in length of days knowledge. Strength is Mine and counsel, and understanding. I break. I build. By Me, kings rise and fall. The weak are given strength; wisdom to those who seek and foolishness to both fooler and fool alike. I lead the crafty through their deceit. I set straight paths for those who will walk them. I am He who gives speech and sight - and confounds and removes them. When I cut, straight and true is my cut. I strike without fault. I am the razored edge of high destiny. I have no enemy, nor friend. My Zeal and Love and Mercy will not relent to track you down until you are spent– even unto the uttermost parts of the earth. I cull the proud and the weak out of the common herd. I hunt them in battles royale until their cries unto Heaven are heard. I break hearts–those whose are harder than granite. Beyond their atomic cores, I strike their atomic clock. Elect motions; not one more or less electron beyond electron’s orbit that has been ordained for you do I give–for His grace is sufficient for thee until He desires enough. Then I, Prayer, move on as a comet, Striking out of the black. I, His sword, kills to give Life. I am Living and Active, the Divider asunder of thoughts and intents. I Am the Light of Eternal Mind. And I, Prayer, AM Prayer Almighty.

She seemed sad and wise beyond her years. All the giddy experimentation with sex, recreational drugs, and revolutionary politics that was still approaching its zenith in countercultural America was ancient, unhappy history to her. Actually, her mother was still in the midst of it—her main boyfriend at the time was a Black Panther on the run from the law—but Caryn, at sixteen, was over it. She was living in West Los Angeles with her mother and little sister, in modest circumstances, going to a public high school. She collected ceramic pigs and loved Laura Nyro, the rapturous singer-songwriter. She was deeply interested in literature and art, but couldn’t be bothered with bullshit like school exams. Unlike me, she wasn’t hedging her bets, wasn’t keeping up her grades to keep her college options open. She was the smartest person I knew—worldly, funny, unspeakably beautiful. She didn’t seem to have any plans. So I picked her up and took her with me, very much on my headstrong terms. I overheard, early on, a remark by one of her old Free School friends. They still considered themselves the hippest, most wised-up kids in L.A., and the question was what had become of their foxy, foulmouthed comrade Caryn Davidson. She had run off, it was reported, “with some surfer.” To them, this was a fate so unlikely and inane, there was nothing else to say. Caryn did have one motive that was her own for agreeing to come to Maui. Her father was reportedly there. Sam had been an aerospace engineer before LSD came into his life. He had left his job and family and, with no explanation beyond his own spiritual search, stopped calling or writing. But the word on the coconut wireless was that he was dividing his time between a Zen Buddhist monastery on the north coast of Maui and a state mental hospital nearby. I was not above mentioning the possibility that Caryn might find him if we moved to the island.

* If you are born poor it's not your mistake, But if you die poor it's your mistake. - Bill Gates * As nature each one born equal, the world divides that into the classes for its motives. It is not a mistake; one born and die rich or poor. It is one's fate since the world runs with it. Ehsan Sehgal

I want to imagine with what new features despotism could be produced in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he does not see them; he touches them and does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if a family still remains for him, one can at least say that he no longer has a native country. Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living? So it is that every day it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space and little by little steals the very use of free will from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all these things: it has disposed them to tolerate them and often even to regard them as a benefit.

We bury ourselves as deep in this little pocket of happiness as we can get.

​“Many,” sighed Ashuri, “and from various faculties. A considerable number of them are not even registered at the university. They come to register, and I ignore the fact that they are not on the roster. This year, I closed registration after seventy-five students had signed up, but in reality over a hundred attended each lecture. For purely selfish reasons, because of my age, I suppose, I refused to accept any more. I have found lately that Kabbalah has shown signs of a resurgence of interest. As a result, many charlatans earn a fine living from it.” ​Elijah remembered that he was really on his way to the library. He parted from Prof. Ashuri in his normal awkward, hesitant and apologetic manner, thanking her profusely no less than three times; he would even have bowed down to her if that was what would have enabled him to expedite his exit. However, Prof. Ashuri had one more important observation to make. ​“I hope that your interest in the Kabbalah will not infect you with that dreaded disease...” she smiled. ​“What disease do you mean?” ​“Kabbalistic literature is generally divided into three major streams. The first and most important one is the cosmological, mission-oriented one. Here we find a direct line between ourselves and the Master of the Universes, by way of His influence on all the intermediate worlds. Note the term, ‘Master of the Universes’ in the plural. In this view, there are mutual influences, going from the upper worlds to us, and from us to the upper worlds. All the commandments and all the proper intentions and all the prayers are ultimately aimed at mending those spheres, which were damaged at the time of the Creation. In the language of the Kabbalah, this means repairing those vessels which were broken. ​“The second stream is Kabbalistic-prophetic. It is an attempt to attain what is known as cleaving to God and to achieve spiritual elevation. This can be accomplished by internal meditation, which includes reciting the Holy Names, internal and external purification, combining sacred letters and repeating them over and over, singing and moving the head, and breathing techniques. This can unite one with the higher worlds. One who does this properly can reach the level of prophecy. There are even books with detailed instructions on how to actually accomplish this and how to ascend to a higher spiritual level. I often hear of students who have embarked on such a course, and it is, indeed, a disease.” ​“Don’t worry about me. And what about the third stream?” ​“The third stream is the one which has elicited the most criticism. It is referred to as Practical Kabbalah. By that, we mean people who use the Kabbalah for their own personal purposes, as a way to exploit the secret knowledge to which they have access in order to control nature and man’s fate. Practical Kabbalah appeals directly to supernatural forces and sometimes even makes them solve the problems of the one calling upon them. These include attempts to foretell the future, to converse with the dead, to heal the sick, to banish evil spirits and the evil eye, and of course to acquire wealth, respect, and/or the love of a man or a woman. That, too, is a dangerous game to play.” Prof. Ashuri laughed, but Elijah could not tell whether or not she was serious.

The 1950s, then, should be seen as a fateful moment in America when history failed to turn and alter the trajectory of the nation.

I was not afraid of emptiness. It made me feel small. Barely worth a first glance, let alone a second. And there was comfort in that, because so often I worried that I was capable of causing too much damage. At least, if I was small and kept to myself, I wouldn’t do any more harm.

My gift comes with its challenges, too,” she says to me after a few laps around the room. For a long time I thought her gift was simple, just seeing other people’s memories at a touch. But it’s more than that. She lives with the past always tugging at her, trying to carry her away on its tide. “Since Ori—” She stops, swallows, starts again. “I’ve been getting stuck in memories. Which is fine when they’re good ones, like with Ast, but they’re not always good, and they come into my dreams—

It said: The most marked characteristic of the Shotet people is directly translated as “armored,” but outsiders might call it “mettle.” It refers not to courageous acts in difficult situations—though the Shotet certainly hold valor in high regard—but to an inherent quality that cannot be learned or imitated; it is in the blood as surely as their revelatory language. Mettle is bearing up again and again under assaults. It is perseverance, acceptance of risk, and the unwillingness to surrender.

Do you think it easy for me to part my way from yours? No. There is a more personal element that divides my path from yours. It is because of what I glimpsed on a far smaller scale. I saw you, after my death, taking satisfaction in the things and people you had so long denied yourself. Living the life you were meant to have, after my death. You gave me another piece of life. Shall I use it to rob you of yours?” More slowly he added, “I can love you Fitz, but I cannot allow that love to destroy you and what you are.” He rubbed at his face wearily, and then exclaimed in annoyance at the skin that peeled away beneath his fingers.

But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).

When ego, unopposed, assumes its throne, The world, in fragments, reaps the seeds it’s sown. A kaleidoscope of discord and divide, Where separate streams in ceaseless turmoil bide. Through ego’s lens, reality transforms, A battleground where rampant desire storms. A sphere of strife, of victory and loss, Where fortunes shift as dice of fate are tossed. In ego’s solitary, narrow view, The world is painted in a hue so skewed. Confined by fears, by selfish dreams confined, Its canvas bears the limits of the mind. Thus, perception, in its manifold grace, Reflects the light of ego and soul’s face. In balance, may the truest sight be found, Where essence and ego in harmony abound. In the crucible where essence blends with sight, A wondrous transformation takes its flight. Where once division’s shadow coldly lay, Interconnection’s dawn breaks forth in day. What opposition’s harsh gaze once discerned, To harmonies of concord is now turned. The essence, with its ancient wisdom’s glow, Unveils the unity that lies below. Each leaf and stone, each soul that wanders free, A note within reality’s grand symphony. Essential, bound within the vast expanse, In life’s intricate, cosmic dance. This alchemical shift in vision’s sphere, Brings forth changes profound, both far and near. Challenges, once daunting, now unfold, As growth’s opportunities, bright and bold. Foes, once clad in enmity’s harsh guise, Transform to teachers, wise beneath the skies. Each joy, each pain, in life’s intricate weave, Threads of our evolution, we perceive. No longer a stage for vain rivalry’s play, But a landscape where learning’s blossoms sway. Growth and learning, in rich abundance, thrive, In this new world where our spirits come alive. Where once the ego’s voice, in solo strain, Ruled with iron will, in self’s domain, Now in harmony with the soul’s sweet song, It finds a place where it truly belongs. No longer master, but a partner kind, Guiding through life with a humble mind. It learns compassion’s tongue, intuition hears, Acts with mindfulness, as purpose nears. In perception’s alchemy, a journey grand, From fractured states to unity’s soft hand, From discord’s harsh cacophony to peace, A path that leads where true essences release. This sacred path, evolving as it weaves, Into our nature’s heart, where spirit cleaves. The veil of separation gently falls, As interconnectedness softly calls. Upon this path, with every step we tread, Our world transforms, new visions in its stead. The mundane now with sacredness imbues, The ordinary in extraordinary hues. Each day becomes a picture, rich and vast, For deepest truths, in vibrant colors cast. Through alchemy of sight, our roles transcend, Not mere observers, but creators bend. In world’s unfolding tale, we play our part, Co-architects, with collective heart. A reality, where highest potentials shine, In this, your design, our spirits intertwine.

To understand the right way to get a project done quickly, it’s useful to think of a project as being divided into two phases. This is a simplification, but it works: first, planning; second, delivery. The terminology varies by industry—in movies, it’s “development and production”; in architecture, “design and construction”—but the basic idea is the same everywhere: Think first, then do.

Quotes and Comparison-2 Several quotes by various philosophers and figures, such as William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, James Russell Lowell, Galileo Galilei, Bill Gates, Ernest Hemingway, Dale Carnegie, Aristotle, and Stephen Hawking, provide a critical comparison with a journalist and scholar Ehsan Sehgal Quotes. 7. I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it. Bill Gates A lazy one remains only the lazy, whether one provides only difficult or non-difficult ways; the problem is laziness, not the nature of matter. Ehsan Sehgal 8. Don't compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself. Bill Gates You may compare yourself with others in the world to correct your flaws and do your best to become unique. Without that, you learn nothing. Ehsan Sehgal 8. If you are born poor it's not your mistake, But if you die poor it's your mistake. Bill Gates As a nature, each one is born equal, the world divides that into the classes for its motives. It is not a mistake; one is born and dies, rich or poor. It is one's fate since the world runs with it. Ehsan Sehgal 9. As a writer, you should not judge. You should understand. Ernest Hemingway As a writer, you should judge and observe; it leads you to understand. Ehsan Sehgal 10. Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have. Dale Carnegie Feeling sorry for oneself demonstrates the way of realizing the tragedies and mistakes of life that may soften the burden of the pain, looking forward with the best efforts. Indeed, sorry is a confession, not a waste of time. Ehsan Sehgal 11. The United Nations was set up not to get us to heaven, but only to save us from hell. Winston Churchill The States of the World reorganized the intergovernmental organization the League of Nations as the United Nations, not for saving us from hell but for bringing us to hell, obeying the Veto Drivers. However, be sure that changing all the long-standing objects, subjects, figures, systems, and monopolies will create a way of peace and heaven. Ehsan Sehgal 12. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in work. Aristotle Pleasure in whatever subject shows willingness and accuracy, not perfection since humans are incapable of that. 13. Dignity does not consist in possessing honours, but in deserving them. Aristotle Sober character, honest conduct, and sweet talk entitle a person to real dignity, nothing else. Ehsan Sehgal 14. You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour. Aristotle Indeed, without concrete action, courage collapses and stays dishonored and unvalued since alone courage establishes nothing. Ehsan Sehgal 15. Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. Stephen Hawking Before observing the stars, first, one should also maintain a foot position for safety so that one can confidently focus on the mysteries and science of the universe; indeed, curiosity reaches and reveals the realities of that. Ehsan Sehgal

One way or the other, this girl might be the death of him.

On December 3, 1934, the grand jury handed out indictments. Accused of willful negligence were Acting Captain William Warms, Chief Engineer Eban Abbott, and Ward Line vice-president Henry E. Cabaud. In the preamble to the charges against Warms, the indictment declared: “Members of the crew were without discipline and did not know what to do, and the passengers were left to help themselves; the passengers in large numbers were pushed into the water or jumped in the water or perished in the fire.” Warms was accused specifically of failing to observe the law in ten matters: 1. To divide the sailors in equal watches. 2. To keep himself advised of the extent of the fire. 3. To maneuver, slow down, or stop the vessel. 4. To have the passengers aroused. 5. To provide the passengers with life preservers. 6. To take steps for the protection of lives. 7. To organize the crew to fight the fire properly. 8. To send distress signals promptly. 9. To see that the passengers were put in lifeboats and that the lifeboats were lowered. 10. To control and direct the crew in the lifeboats after the lifeboats had been lowered.

I’d always wondered,” Lazmet said. “If you don’t have a word for a thing, can you still know what it is? Is it something that lives in you that goes unarticulated, or does it disappear from your awareness entirely?

You may be one of the only people who can possibly know, but you don’t seem to have the capacity to answer.” “You think I’m stupid,” Akos said. “I think you’ve programmed yourself to survive, and you have little energy for anything else,” Lazmet said. “If you had not had to fight to live, perhaps you could have become a more interesting person, but here we are.

To one who is in pain all the time, even minor differences can be miracles, of a sort.

It was so much harder—so much harder to accept her forgiveness than her condemnation, because it meant that he had to change.

In 1998, the avant-garde publisher Semiotext(e) issued Airless Spaces, a collection of Firestone’s stories set in and out of mental hospitals, a life she herself had lived for many of the silent years following the publication of The Dialectic of Sex. Like Piercy’s Connie Ramos, Firestone’s characters are desperate inside the hospital and destitute when out. Years of medication and institutional routine have left one unable to read, write or “care about anything, and love was forgotten”: She was lucid, yes, at what price. She sometimes recognized on the faces of others joy and ambition and other emotions she could recall having had once, long ago. But her life was ruined, and she had no salvage plan. Who is “she” in this story? Airless Spaces contains 51 vignettes, divided into headings such as “Hospitals,” “Losers,” “Obituaries,” and “Suicides I Have Known.” So recognizably autobiographical are elements of these that their status as fiction becomes suspect. (One rather vindictive obituary is for an actual feminist, dead at 50, who had helped to overthrow the founding principles of a woman’s group that Firestone started in the East Village, the coup that finally provoked her withdrawal from the women’s movement.) These romans - à – clef reinforce the question still directed at Firestone’s project: is their author’s self-described “madness” the fate reserved for those who would contest sexual difference?

Winter feared the Spring, and thus the blizzard was created as a product of Winter’s intense wrath, and as a testament to Winter’s never-ending war with Spring. They bid over the fate of the Earth, dividing the animals and setting a path of both destruction and evolution.

To what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do.

I didn’t suffer from a lack of fuel. The currentshadows had been so strong all my life, strong enough to render me incapable of attending a simple dinner party, strong enough to bow my back and force tears from my eyes, strong enough to keep me awake and pacing all through the night. Strong enough to kill, but now I understood why they killed. It wasn’t because they drained the life from a person, but because they overwhelmed it. It was like gravity—we needed it to stay grounded, alive, but if it was too strong, it formed a black hole, from which even light could not escape. Yes, the force of the current was too fierce for one body to contain— Unless that body was mine. My body, battered again and again by soldiers and brothers and enemies, but still working its way upright— My body, a channel for the pure force of current, the hum-buzz of life that brought others to their knees— Life is full of pain, I had told Akos, trying to draw him back from depression. Your capacity for bearing it is greater than you believe. And I had been right. I had had every reason to become closed off, wrapped up tight, pushing everything that resembled life and growth and power as far away from myself as possible. It would have been easier that way, to refuse to let anything in. But I had let Akos in, trusting him when I had forgotten how to trust, and I had let Teka in, too, and maybe one day, Sifa— I would let anyone in who dared draw near. I was like the planet Ogra, which welcomed anyone and anything that could survive life close to it. Not because I deserved pain, and not because I was too strong to feel it, but because I was resilient enough to accept it as an inevitability.

As if peace is what I could have with someone who attacks me, and threatens me, and takes advantage of my inability to speak.

It was getting easier and easier to imagine himself as the Armored One, the more he wanted to be away from everything and everyone. Armored Ones were solitary, separate from everything that channeled the current. Lonely, but impenetrable, just like he was.

I squinted at him. “Is that the truth, or is that just something you’re telling me to manipulate me into doing what you want?

Maybe knowing the future forced you to be at peace with it. But I didn’t think so.

As nature each one is born equal, the world divides that into the classes for its motives. It is not a mistake; one is born and dies rich or poor; it is one's fate since the world runs with it.

* If you are born poor it's not your mistake, But if you die poor it's your mistake. - Bill Gates * As nature each one is born equal, the world divides that into the classes for its motives. It is not a mistake; one is born and dies rich or poor; it is one's fate since the world runs with it. Ehsan Sehgal

Don't be upset that you can't attain constant happiness. It's the quickest way to feel like a failure in life. If each of our lives represented a page in a book, happiness would be the punctuation. It breaks up the parts that are too long. It closes off some things, divides others. But it's brief-showing up when it's needed and filling tired paragraphs with breaks. Being content is a more attainable constant state. To love your fate without being drunk on euphoria. Brave, determined acceptance removed of bitterness. Be gentle with yourself. Embrace the lows so that you can more effectively enjoy the highs. Love the fight. Love it so much, and let it save you when your emotional muscles have become soft. Kit and I have that. Sometimes, so much joy our hearts ache from it. Sometimes, we have sadness when we're away from Annie or Port Townsend. We feel torn between all the things we love. We fight; we make love. I don't see Muslim again. And after one phone call, I never speak to him again. I hear plenty about him, and I remember our time. And I wonder if you have space in your heart for more than one person. I think you do.

But that’s where you’re wrong. I already have. I’ve found happiness with her in every lifetime you’ve given us together. You thought you cursed us to live this fate over and over, but all you really did was give us more time together than any two people should have. And you’ve cursed yourself to have to watch us fall in love all over again. Every time.

Visvaviking (Sonnet 1504) Smiling through my martyrdom I took the world into my care. Ice cold currents of catastrophe are no match for my asgardian dare. Swimming through a tsunami of sneer, I found my peace in world's welfare. Beware, o merchants of malice and hate, Better not force your fate out of layer! Crushing all memorials of invading scourge, Parting the ocean to deliver from divide, Rushing as apocalypse to right the wrong, I am Sapiothunder to all genocidal pride. I don't need invite from some puny paradise; Cosmos, my Shangri-la - me, the Servant King. Odin doesn't wait up for Valhalla to call - Valhalla is my empire - I am Visvaviking!

Once again thanks to the ill-fated Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into three noncontiguous areas: A, B, and C. Area A, which today constitutes 18 percent of the West Bank, falls under the control of the Palestinian Authority. That means the PA is in charge of education, health, the economy, and policing there. In Area B, which constitutes 22 percent of the West Bank, the PA is similarly in charge of civil affairs, but its police presence exists only in coordination with the Israeli army. In both Areas A and B, the Israeli army can enter whenever it wants to carry out raids and arrests, and it does so frequently. Finally, there’s Area C, which makes up an overwhelming 60 percent of the West Bank and is fully under Israel’s civil and security control. This includes all matters related to land allocation, planning and construction, and infrastructure. Area C is where all of Israel’s illegal settlements are located, in addition to the accompanying bypass roads built exclusively for the settlers to use. Area C is also richly endowed with natural resources, like the main water aquifer for the entire country, which Israel controls.

Can or cannot. Chance or necessity. Free will or fate (...) its easy to divide this world in half. Telling them apart afterward is what's difficult. The mirror and yourself. They ought to be different, but you can longer tell how.

When there is a riot in the heart, its time to steal a season not depart; for it is a desire in the harsh light of day, where a river divides fate come what may.

The spectacle erases the dividing line between self and world, in that the self- under siege by the presence/absence of the world, is eventually overwhelmed; it likewise erases the dividing line between true and false, repressing all directly lived truth beneath the real presence of the falsehood maintained by the organization of appearances. The individual, though condemned to the passive acceptance of an alien everyday reality, is thus driven into a form of madness in which, by resorting to magical devices, he entertains the illusion that he is reacting to this fate.

The heart of the white world was divided against itself, and on the fateful 1st of August, 1914, the white race, forgetting ties of blood and culture, heedless of the growing pressure of the colored world without, locked in a battle to the death.

Since then many years have passed, and in those years I have often thought how strange are the ways of Fate. Set on one's waylay a single ill-considered spontaneous remark, one is led into a course of action that cannot be stopped whether one wants to or not. At the moment of departure we do not even dream of where our voyage will take us. Even when we have started we deluded ourselves for an unconscionable time that in a short while it will soon be over, and we shall be free again to do as we please. Sometimes, in forests, one meets two such paths that, although divided perhaps by a stream or ditch, seem at first sight to run parallel to one another. One imagines that whichever one chooses will lead us to the same place. However, slowly the paths diverge...and never meet again.

No natural forces determine income, wealth, and the quality of human life. We make the decisions about who will prosper and who will not—or we let other people make them for us. In societies with democratically elected governments, we are the captains of our fate, because when we elect politicians we choose their policies as carried out by presidents and governors, Congress and legislatures, and those they appoint as judges and regulators. For now, what we have chosen is extreme inequality, the worst by far of any nation with a modern economy.

Ancient Ways The Greek Isles are divided into several major chains lying in the Aegean, the Mediterranean, and the Ionian seas. The Cyclades chain alone includes more than two hundred islands clustered in the southern Aegean. In the southeastern Aegean, between Crete and Asia Minor, there are 163 islands known as the Dodecanese chain. Only 26 of these are inhabited; the largest of them is Rhodes, where the world-famous Colossus once stood. The Ionian chain of western Greece (named for the eponymous sea) includes the large island of Corfu. Cyprus lies in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey. Today, Cyprus stands politically divided, with Turkish rule in the north, and a government in the south that remains independent from Greece. However, the island has always been linked culturally and linguistically to Greece, and it shares traditions and ways of life with the smaller islands scattered to its south and west. In the Greek Isles, history blends myth and fact. Historians glean information about the early days of the Greek Isles from the countless ancient stories and legends set there. According to Homer, battleships sailed from the harbors of Kos and Rhodes during the Trojan War. A well-known legend holds that the Argonauts sought refuge from a storm on the island of Anafi in the southeastern Cyclades. The lovely island of Lésvos is mentioned throughout the Homeric epics and in many ancient Greek tales. Tradition has it that the god Helios witnessed the island of Rhodes rising mystically from the sea, and chose it for his home. The ill-fated Daedalus and his son, Icarus, attempted to soar through the skies over the magical island of Crete, where the great god Zeus was born in a mountaintop cave. Villagers still recount how Aphrodite emerged from the sea on a breathtaking stretch of beach near the village of Paphos on Cyprus. Visitors must actually lay eyes on a Greek island to gain a full appreciation for these ancient stories. Just setting foot on one of these islands makes you feel as if you’ve stepped into one of the timeless tales from ancient Greek mythology.

Precisely because it's so unusual, America's status as a super-group has led us astray when it comes to assessing the tribal politics of other nations. We forget how unusual it is to have both an extremely diverse, multiethnic population and a strong overarching national identity capable of binding the people together. Libya, Syria, and Iraq are all, like the United States, postcolonial, multiethnic nations, but none of them has a national identity anywhere close to as strong as ours. In countries like these, it can be a catastrophic mistake to imagine that through democratic elections, people will suddenly rally around a national identity and overcome their preexisting ethnic, religious, sectarian, and tribal divides. On the contrary, in sharply divided societies, democracy often galvanizes group conflict, with political movements and parties coalescing around these more primal identities. America has made this mistake over and over again. Thus American exceptionalism, in its different facets, both at its ugliest and most inspiring, lies at the root of our obliviousness to the tribal identities that matter most intensely to people abroad. Sometimes racism blinds us. But most fundamentally, we tend to assume that other nations can handle diversity as we have, and that a strong national identity will overcome more primal group divisions.

Now is not the time for this debate!' 'Cyra' he said, and he touched my arm, his tough light as ever 'Now is the *only* time for this debate. How can we talk about where we're going now, what we're doing now, if we haven't talked about who--and what--we *are* now?

I said, "When someone asks you to trade the chance of Lazmet Noavek's death for the life of Ryzek's Scourge..." and then shouted, ".. you do it!

If you are born poor it's not your mistake, But if you die poor it's your mistake. Bill Gates ____ As nature, each one born equal, the world divides that into the classes, for its motives. It is not a mistake; one born and die, rich or poor. It is one's fate since the world runs, with it. Ehsan Sehgal

The bible divides mankind, god will decide our fate.

This was agony. Never before had she dared disobey him. Never before had the path she chose to walk seem so murky. The crossroads branched out before her, dividing her loyalties. Whichever side she chose now would seal her fate forever. There would be no turning back again. - Rhianna - Shadowsong

I hadn’t cried in seasons, unless I was alone,” I say. “No one was ever there to comfort me, not even my mother. All the tragedies of my life, they’re too hard for most people to handle. But you could handle it. You could handle whatever I told you.

Space was not a finite container, but that didn’t mean it was empty. Asteroids, stars, planets, the currentstream; space debris, ships, fragmented moons, undiscovered worlds; this was a place of endless possibility and unfathomable freedom. It was not nothing; it was everything.

Regardless of our destiny, the clear miracle is that little blobs of protoplasm making up a species barely a hundred thousand years old living in the outskirts of a not especially remarkable galaxy have been able to learn so much about the Universe around us. We have peered back to the moments after the Big Bang, and have inferred the likely fate awaiting trillions of years from now. We have been able to probe the farthest reaches of the Universe by detecting the feeble vibrations of gravitational radiation, and have begun to lift the veil on what planets are out there, and what they may be like. The saga of exploring planetary systems has just begun. There is no limit to what we can accomplish, if we can make it through the next few hundred years without crashing the Earth’s habitability, and without letting the authoritarianism emerging throughout the world crush the human spirit, dividing us one from the other, and separating us from our better natures.

In addition to accountability and an interest in accuracy, the charter should also encourage and celebrate a diversity of perspectives to challenge biased thinking by individual members. Jonathan Haidt, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is a leading expert in exploring group thought in politics. Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, built on Tetlock’s work, connecting it with the need for diversity. “If you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth.

Pettigrew found that the brain manages the external world by dividing it into separate regions, the peripersonal and the extrapersonal—basically, near and far. Peripersonal space includes whatever is in arm’s reach; things you can control right now by using your hands. This is the world of what’s real, right now. Extrapersonal space refers to everything else—whatever you can’t touch unless you move beyond your arm’s reach,

Mettle is bearing up again and again under assaults. It is perseverance, acceptance of risk, and the unwillingness to surrender.

They weren’t beautiful. Scars rarely were.

Grief had a way of doing that, making people uncomfortable.

Just tell me—tell me if I’m something you’re choosing, or not. Just tell me.

But I didn’t have to be an oracle to see that of all the possible futures that existed, there wasn’t a single one where that outcome was possible. I would never believe a lie. And Akos would never tell me one.

I am in love with you,” I said. “But for once in my life, I want someone to choose me. And you don’t. You can’t.

We are hundreds of slowing hearts.

It wasn’t reassuring. What a person tried to do didn’t matter—what mattered was the result.

There’s poetry in it, in that poetry can be raw, and cruel, and strange, like this.

I’m holding her together, I think. And, What happens when I can’t anymore?

But maybe I just can’t really see him. There is a special kind of sight that comes with not knowing someone your whole life,

Want me, I told him, with each clutch of my fingers. Choose me. Want me.

I just wanted to take and take and take whatever he would give, knowing that this might be the last time I let myself.

Kyerta,” she said, “is a revelation that causes your world to shift on its axis. It is a profound truth that, once you know it, inevitably alters your future, though it has already occurred and should, therefore, change nothing.

Sifa offered a toast, translating to Shotet from Thuvhesit: “To what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do.” And I drank.

Don’t trust your heart, that fate had told him, and he’d hated it for that reason.

Not so much as a good-bye. He had decided I wasn’t worth that basic decency.

I had pretended, with Teka, that I was translating this section of the book to learn more about my own family, that it had nothing to do with Akos. But the unfortunate truth was that I was still in love with him.

He’d left Ogra without saying anything to Cyra, knowing it would make her hate him—that was the point. If she hated him, she wouldn’t look for him. She would assume he had gone back to Thuvhe, and leave him be.

And then, that little pool of heat in his gut as he followed a painted Cyra to the Sojourn Festival, the one that told him he liked her, no matter how hard he pretended otherwise. Liked her, then loved her. Then left her.

Why do you have this expectation that life will make concessions for you?” She scowled. “We are not promised ease, comfort, or fairness. Only pain and death.

This is the problem you have, the problem you’ve always had. You think you have hurt worse than anyone else in the galaxy. Well, no one cares about your story of woe!

Not because I deserved pain, and not because I was too strong to feel it, but because I was resilient enough to accept it as an inevitability.

But that was the way of things—sometimes, wounds were too deep to heal. Sometimes, people didn’t want to reconcile. Sometimes, even though a solution might create worse problems than there were to begin with, people chose it anyway.

What I did,” he said, “cut out a piece of me.” “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all hacked up and stitched back together, too.” She pulled away. “For now,” she said, “just be my friend again, okay? And we can talk about the whole ‘I’m still in love with you, what the hell do we do about it’ question later.

The visions are a curse,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “They keep throwing us into other people’s lives, other people’s pain—

Good. I wanted to fight. Fighting was something I could do, something I had trained myself to do whenever things got difficult. It was what kept me safe—not avoidance, because when had I ever been able to avoid the things that hurt me? No, it wasn’t pretending I wouldn’t get knocked down that protected me, but the knowledge that I would get back up as many times as I had to.

The most striking thing about this economic story is the degree to which American politicians conspired to accelerate, rather than to slow, the divide between the fates of the super-rich and those of ordinary citizens. Ronald Reagan slashed the top tax rate for high-income earners from 70 percent to 50 percent in 1981, and then again to 38.5 percent in 1986. George W. Bush cut the top income rate to 35 percent and the capital gains rate— which is almost exclusively paid by the wealthy—from 20 percent to 15 percent in 2003.

Suffer the fate,’ she said,” we reply. “‘For all else is delusion.

There’s not much I don’t understand about loss. I just can’t express it the way other people do.

But I know, I know as well as anybody that there’s no escape. Grief is absolute.

Dylan, Duende, Death and Lorca Does Bob Dylan have Duende? DUENDE dancers perform moving, unique, unrepeatable performances Does Bob Dylan have duende? Do you have duende? What is duende? Duende is a Spanish word with two meanings. A duende is a goblin or a pixie that probably lives at the bottom of the garden and gives three wishes to old ladies who deserve a break. The duende was best defined by Spain’s great poet Federico García Lorca during a lecture he gave in New York in 1929 on Andalusian music known as cante jondo, or deep voice. ‘The duende,’ he said, ‘is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.’ The difference between a good and a bad singer is that the good singer has the duende and the bad singer doesn’t. ‘There are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned.’ Some critics say Bob Dylan does not have a great voice. But more than any other performer since the birth of recorded music, Dylan has revealed the indefinable, spine-tingling something captured in Lorca’s interpretation of duende. ‘It is an inexplicable power of attraction, the ability to send waves of emotion through those watching and listening to them.’ ‘The duende,’ he continues, ‘resembles what Goethe called the demoniacal. It manifests itself principally among musicians and poets of the spoken word, for it needs the trembling of the moment and then a long silence.’ painting off hell by Hieronymus Bosch Hell & Hieronymus Bosch Four elements can be found in Lorca’s vision of duende: irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical. I agree with Lorca that duende manifests principally among singers, but would say that same magic may touch us when confronted by great paintings: Picasso’s Guernica, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the paintings of heaven and hell by Hieronymus Bosch. The duende is found in the bitter roots of human existence, what Lorca referred to as ‘the pain which has no explanation.’ Artists often feel sad without knowing why. They sense the cruel inevitability of fate. They smell the coppery scent of death. All artists live in a permanent state of angst knowing that what they have created could have been better. Death with Duende It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.

Sifa hadn’t been much of anywhere since Ryzek died, holing up in the belly of the ship to whisper the future to herself, barefoot, pacing. Cyra and Teka had been alarmed, but he told them that’s just how oracles were. Or at least, that was how his mother the oracle was. Sometimes sharp as a knife, sometimes half outside her own body, her own time.