Trivial Issues Quotes

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak.

Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.

That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e. so long as it isn’t democracy.

If only my issues were as trivial as matters of the heart

HOW TO ASCERTAIN THE WILL OF GOD I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter. Nine-tenths of the trouble with people generally is just here. Nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord's will, whatever it may be. When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is. 2.—Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impression. If so, I make myself liable to great delusions. 3.—I seek the Will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them. 4.—Next I take into account providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God's Will in connection with His Word and Spirit. 5.—I ask God in prayer to reveal His Will to me aright. 6.—Thus, through prayer to God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge, and if my mind is thus at peace, and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly. In trivial matters, and in transactions involving most important issues, I have found this method always effective. GEORGE MÜLLER.

Many times a huge problem gets solved with a trivial move.

You should focus on those things that will lead you to succeed instead of wasting your time on trivial issues.

Our modern cities have become in large part agglomerations of bedroom apartments in which men and women spiritually wither away and their personalities become trivialized by the petty concerns of amusement, consumption, and small talk.

Yet man is born to love. He is compassionate, just and good. He sheds tears for others and such tears give him pleasure. He invents stories to make him weep. Whence then this furious desire for wars and slaughter? Why does man plunge into the abyss, embracing with passion that which inspires him with such loathing? Why do men who revolt over such trivial issues as attempts to change the calendar allow themselves to be sent like obedient animals to kill and be killed?

The overwhelmingly standard evangelical response to sexual brokenness has been to address it through the lens of “lust management,” even declaring war against it. This approach has oversimplified and trivialized a far more complex issue within human sexuality.

The situation is established not only to provoke defensiveness but to sidetrack the reformer into answering the wrong questions.... In this, the pattern of discourse resembles that of dinnertime conversations about feminism in the early 1970s. Questions of definition often predominate. Whereas feminists were parlaying questions which trivialized feminism such as "Are you one of those bra burners?" vegetarians must define themselves against the trivializations of "Are you one of those health nuts?" or "Are you one of those animal lovers?" While feminists encountered the response that "men need liberation too," vegetarians are greeted by the postulate that "plants have life too." Or to make the issue appear more ridiculous, the position is forwarded this way: "But what of the lettuce and tomato you are eating; they have feelings too!" The attempt to create defensiveness through trivialization is the first conversational gambit which greets threatening reforms. This pre-establishes the perimeters of discourse. One must explain that no bras were burned at the Miss America pageant, or the symbolic nature of the action of that time, or that this question fails to regard with seriousness questions such as equal pay for equal work. Similarly, a vegetarian, thinking that answering these questions will provide enlightenment, may patiently explain that if plants have life, then why not be responsible solely for the plants one eats at the table rather than for the larger quantities of plants consumed by the herbivorous animals before they become meat? In each case a more radical answer could be forwarded: "Men need first to acknowledge how they benefit from male dominance," "Can anyone really argue that the suffering of this lettuce equals that of a sentient cow who must be bled out before being butchered?" But if the feminist or vegetarian responds this way they will be put back on the defensive by the accusation that they are being aggressive. What to a vegetarian or a feminist is of political, personal, existential, and ethical importance, becomes for others only an entertainment during dinnertime.

Sayre’s law, named after political scientist Wallace Sayre, offers that in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. A related concept is Parkinson’s law of triviality, named after naval historian Cyril Parkinson, which states that organizations tend to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.

Was engaging with world issues a defense mechanism to trivialize personal pain, or was I doing it to be aware and responsible?

To be dignified and respected, one must not interfere in trivial matters, one must not intrude into private issues!

Why argue that it was “only words” except to imply that words are trivial, neither serious nor harmful, an argument that at the least elides the issue of what exactly was said and by whom.10

My work has often been described as “chick lit” and for the most part the term doesn’t bother me. I think it simply signals to readers that the book is about women, written for women (although many men enjoy my books), about issues that concern women (relationships, careers, etc.) The only thing that bothers me is when the label is used disparagingly, to imply that all chick lit is, by definition, superficial, beach-read fluff because I believe that this is akin to saying that all women are devoid of substance and the issues that concern us, are fundamentally trivial ones. And I take issue with that.

It took the Press only a few days to transform some ridiculously trivial matter into an issue of national importance, while vital problems were completely ignored or filched and hidden away from public attention.

The discovery of useful forms is precious. Once found, they should never be abandoned for trivial reasons. It’s easy to imagine today’s art instructor cautioning Chopin that the Mazurka thing is getting a little repetitive, that the work is not progressing. Well, true, it may not have been progressing — but that’s not the issue. Writing Mazurkas may have been useful only to Chopin — as a vehicle for getting back into the work, and as a place to begin making the next piece. For most artists, making good art depends upon making lots of art, and any device that carries the first brushstroke to the next blank canvas has tangible, practical value. Only

I have been, I think, altogether disparaging about the ‘escapist’ elements of the genre, emphasizing its powers to address social, moral and even philosophical issues at the expense of celebrating its dreamier virtues. I took this position out of a genuine desire to defend a fictional form I love from accusations of triviality and triteness, but my zeal led me astray. Yes, fantastic fiction can be intricately woven into the texture of our daily lives, addressing important issues in fabulist form. But it also serves to release us for a time from the definitions that confine our daily selves; to unplug us from a world that wounds and disappoints us, allowing us to venture into places of magic and transformation.

And, just as consequential, the post-Hart climate made it much easier for candidates who weren’t especially thoughtful—who didn’t have any complex understanding of governance, or even much affinity for it—to gain national prominence. When a politician could duck any real intellectual scrutiny simply by deriding the evident triviality of the media, when the status quo was to never say anything that required more than ten words’ worth of explanation, then pretty much anyone could rail against the system and glide through the process without having to establish more than a passing familiarity with the issues. As long as you weren’t delinquent on your taxes or having an affair with a stripper or engaged in some other form of rank duplicity, you could run as a “Tea Partier” or a “populist” without ever having to elaborate on what you actually believed or what you would do for the country.

The youth spoke of his reasons for desiring Margaret for a wife, among which were her health, her likely fecundity, her reputation for hard work won at her father’s forge, and even her appearance. He did not mention love, but such emotion is trivial compared to the important issues of survival, work, and heirs.

It’s human nature to get distracted by minor issues. We play Trivial Pursuit with our lives. Henry David Thoreau observed that people live lives of “quiet desperation,” but today a better description is aimless distraction. Many people are like gyroscopes, spinning around at a frantic pace but never going anywhere.

And over such a trivial issue, after all their years together! She couldn't even exactly remember the issue! Why that particular one? Why not any of the hundreds of others? Once again Michael hesitated, but then he turned toward the foyer. She heard the front door latch, and a moment later his car lights lit up and backed out of the driveway. She went on staring straight ahead of her. She had a slippery, off-balance feeling, the feeling a person might get if she were sitting on a stopped train and the train next to hers started gliding away and she wasn't sure, for a second, whether it was her train or the other one that was moving.

someone who practices Stoic principles “must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” Furthermore, compared to these joys, pleasures of the flesh are “paltry and trivial and fleeting.”6

I remember both of us becoming tearful on that day, not so much because of the insights, but because of the increased sense of reverence we had for each other. We discovered that even seemingly trivial things often have roots in deep emotional experiences. To deal only with the superficial trivia without seeing the deeper, more tender issues is to trample on the sacred ground of another’s heart.

We would gladly have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars and the truth is not in them. Shrill… vituperative… no concern for the future of society… maunderings of antiquated feminism… selfish femlib… needs a good lay… this shapeless book… of course a calm and objective discussion is beyond… twisted, neurotic… some truth buried in a largely hysterical… of very limited interest, I should… another tract for the trash-can… burned her bra and thought that… no characterization, no plot… really important issues are neglected while… hermetically sealed… women's limited experience… another of the screaming sisterhood… a not very appealing aggressiveness… could have been done with wit if the author had… deflowering the pretentious male… a man would have given his right arm to… hardly girlish… a woman's book… another shrill polemic which the… a mere male like myself can hardly… a brilliant but basically confused study of feminine hysteria which… feminine lack of objectivity… this pretense at a novel… trying to shock… the tired tricks of the anti-novelists… how often must a poor critic have to… the usual boring obligatory references to Lesbianism… denial of the profound sexual polarity which… an all too womanly refusal to face facts… pseudo-masculine brusqueness… the ladies'-magazine level… trivial topics like housework and the predictable screams of… those who cuddled up to ball-breaker Kate will… unfortunately sexless in its outlook… drivel… a warped clinical protest against… violently waspish attack… formidable self-pity which erodes any chance of… formless… the inability to accept the female role which… the predictable fury at anatomy displaced to… without the grace and compassion which we have the right to expect… anatomy is destiny… destiny is anatomy… sharp and funny but without real weight or anything beyond a topical… just plain bad… we "dear ladies," whom Russ would do away with, unfortunately just don't feel… ephemeral trash, missiles of the sex war… a female lack of experience which… Q. E. D. Quod erat demonstrandum. It has been proved.

At first I was quite surprised when I realized how little time was necessary for this great evil power within the state to produce a certain belief among the public. In doing so, the genuine will and convictions of the public were often completely misconstrued. It took the press only a few days to transform some ridiculously trivial matter into an issue of national importance-while vital problems were completely ignored or hidden away from public view.

Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked. Elizabeth had a vague idea, since everyone was always telling her, and she suppressed a worried impulse to reply, “Do you have any idea how intelligent I am?” It wasn’t that she was an intellectual by any stretch of the imagination, but she did like to read and even debate issues, and she wasn’t at all certain he would like that in her. He never expressed an opinion on anything except the most trivial generalities and he never asked for hers. “You’re enchanting,” he whispered, and Elizabeth wondered, very seriously, why he thought that. He didn’t know how much she loved to fish, or to laugh, or that she could shoot a pistol so well she was almost a marksman. He didn’t know she’d once had chariot races across the yard at Havenhurst, or that flowers seemed to bloom especially well for her. She didn’t even know if he’d like to hear all the wonderful tales of Havenhurst and its colorful former inhabitants. He knew so little of her; she knew even less about him.

And if I was seen as temperamentally cool and collected, measured in how I used my words, Joe was all warmth, a man without inhibitions, happy to share whatever popped into his head. It was an endearing trait, for he genuinely enjoyed people. You could see it as he worked a room, his handsome face always cast in a dazzling smile (and just inches from whomever he was talking to), asking a person where they were from, telling them a story about how much he loved their hometown (“Best calzone I ever tasted”) or how they must know so-and-so (“An absolutely great guy, salt of the earth”), flattering their children (“Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”) or their mother (“You can’t be a day over forty!”), and then on to the next person, and the next, until he’d touched every soul in the room with a flurry of handshakes, hugs, kisses, backslaps, compliments, and one-liners. Joe’s enthusiasm had its downside. In a town filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk, he had no peer. If a speech was scheduled for fifteen minutes, Joe went for at least a half hour. If it was scheduled for a half hour, there was no telling how long he might talk. His soliloquies during committee hearings were legendary. His lack of a filter periodically got him in trouble, as when during the primaries, he had pronounced me “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a phrase surely meant as a compliment, but interpreted by some as suggesting that such characteristics in a Black man were noteworthy. As I came to know Joe, though, I found his occasional gaffes to be trivial compared to his strengths. On domestic issues, he was smart, practical, and did his homework. His experience in foreign policy was broad and deep. During his relatively short-lived run in the primaries, he had impressed me with his skill and discipline as a debater and his comfort on a national stage. Most of all, Joe had heart. He’d overcome a bad stutter as a child (which probably explained his vigorous attachment to words) and two brain aneurysms in middle age.

I said she didn’t have that problem herself anymore, since she’d decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said “even steven” was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand.

In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.

So, Colonna, please demonstrate to our friends how it's possible to respect, or appear to respect, one fundamental principle of democratic journalism, which is separating fact from opinion. ...' 'Simple,' I said. 'Take the major British or American newspapers. If they report, say, a fire or a car accident, then obviously they can't indulge in saying what they think. And so they introduce into the piece, in quotation marks, the statements of a witness, a man in the street, someone who represents public opinion. Those statements, once put in quotes, become facts - in other words, it's a fact that that person expressed that opinion. But it might be assumed that the journalist has only quoted someone who thinks like him. So there will be two conflicting statements to show, as a fact, that there are varying opinions on a particular issue, and the newspaper is taking account of this irrefutable fact. The trick lies in quoting first a trivial opinion and then another opinion that is more respectable, and more closely reflects the journalist's view. In this way, readers are under the impression that they are being informed about two facts, but they're persuaded to accept just one view as being more convincing.

Even if he is my best friend in theory, I sometimes feel as if I share more of my life with Cate and April and even Rachel - at least when it comes to the everyday matters that comprise my life - from the alive of cheesecake I regret eating to the killer sunglasses I found on sale to the adorable thing Ruby said or Frank did. Eventually, I get around to telling Nick this stuff, too, if it's still relevant or pressing when were finally together at the end of the day. But more often, I mentally pare down the important issues and spare him the trivial ones - or at least the ones I think he would deem trivial.

Even if he is my best friend in theory, I sometimes feel as if I share more of my life with Cate and April and even Rachel - at least when it comes to the everyday matters that comprise my life - from the slice of cheesecake I regret eating to the killer sunglasses I found on sale to the adorable thing Ruby said or Frank did. Eventually, I get around to telling Nick this stuff, too, if it's still relevant or pressing when we're finally together at the end of the day. But more often, I mentally pare down the important issues and spare him the trivial ones - or at least the ones I think he would deem trivial.

She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even-steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated, I was living with my head in the sand. (...) I said there was more than one way of living with your head in the sand and that if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away, I said. You couldn't just ignore them .

What Ethereum Is Good For Ethereum is suited to building economic systems in pure software. In other words, it’s software for business logic, wherein people (users) can move money (data representing value) around with the speed and scale that we normally get with data.12 Not the three- to seven-day floating period you get with the commercial banking system. Or the fees associated with vendors such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal. With a simple Ethereum application, for example, it is fairly trivial to pay hundreds of thousands of people, in hundreds of countries, small amounts every few minutes, whereas in the legacy banking system you would need an entire payroll department working overtime to constantly rebalance your account ledgers and deal with the cross-border issues.

Low inhibition and anxiety “There was no fear, no worry, no sense of reputation and competition, no envy, none of these things which in varying degrees have always been present in my work.” “A lowered sense of personal danger; I don’t feel threatened anymore, and there is no feeling of my reputation being at stake.” “Although doing well on these problems would be fine, failure to get ahead on them would have been threatening. However, as it turned out, on this afternoon the normal blocks in the way of progress seemed to be absent.” 2. Capacity to restructure problem in a larger context “Looking at the same problem with [psychedelic] materials, I was able to consider it in a much more basic way, because I could form and keep in mind a much broader picture.” “I could handle two or three different ideas at the same time and keep track of each.” “Normally I would overlook many more trivial points for the sake of expediency, but under the drug, time seemed unimportant. I faced every possible questionable issue square in the face.” “Ability to start from the broadest general basis in the beginning.” “I returned to the original problem…. I tried, I think consciously, to think of the problem in its totality, rather than through the devices I had used before.” 3. Enhanced fluency and flexibility of ideation “I began to work fast, almost feverishly, to keep up with the flow of ideas.” “I began to draw …my senses could not keep up with my images …my hand was not fast enough …my eyes were not keen enough…. I was impatient to record the picture (it has not faded one particle). I worked at a pace I would not have thought I was capable of.” “I was very impressed with the ease with which ideas appeared (it was virtually as if the world is made of ideas, and so it is only necessary to examine any part of the world to get an idea). I also got the feeling that creativity is an active process in which you limit yourself and have an objective, so there is a focus about which ideas can cluster and relate.” “I dismissed the original idea entirely, and started to approach the graphic problem in a radically different way. That was when things started to happen. All kinds of different possibilities came to mind….” “And the feeling during this period of profuse production was one of joy and exuberance…. It was the pure fun of doing, inventing, creating, and playing.

Apocalypse is a part of the modern Absurd. This is testimony to its vitality, a vitality dependent upon its truth to the set of our fear and desire. Acknowledged, qualified by the scepticism of the clerks, it is--even when ironized, even when denied--an essential element in the arts, a permanent feature of a permanent literature of crisis. If it becomes myth, if its past is forgotten, we sink quickly into myth, into stereotype. We have to employ our knowledge of the fictive. With it we can explain what is essential and eccentric about early modernism, and purge the trivial and stereotyped from the arts of our own time. Great men deceived themselves by neglecting to do this; other men, later, have a programme against doing it. The critics should know their duty. Part of this duty, certainly, will be to abandon ways of speaking which on the one hand obscure the true nature of our fictions--by confusing them with myths, by rendering spatial what is essentially temporal--and on the other obscure our sense of reality by suggesting that fictions represent some kind of surrender or false consolation. The critical issue, given the perpetual assumption of crisis, is no less than the justification of ideas of order. They have to be justified in terms of what survives, and also in terms of what we can accept as valid in a world different from that out of which they come, resembling the earlier world only in that there is biological and cultural continuity of some kind. Our order, our form, is necessary; our skepticism as to fictions requires that it shall not be spurious. It is an issue central to the understanding of modern literary fiction, and I hope in my next talk to approach it more directly.

What would she tell me, about the Commander, if she were here? Probably she'd disapprove. She disapproved of Luke, back then. Not of Luke but of the fact that he was married. She said I was poaching, on another woman's ground. I said Luke wasn't a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I am. I said she didn't have that problem herself anymore, since she'd decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even Steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand. We

Is it a long time since you saw him last?” I asked, not wishing to appear reluctant to speak to him of Morel, nor yet to seem to know that they lived together all the time. “He called in for five minutes this morning, as it happens, while I was still half asleep, and came and sat on the end of my bed, as if he were going to rape me!” I immediately concluded that M. de Charlus had seen Charlie within the hour, for when one asks a man’s mistress when she last saw the man one knows—and whom she perhaps thinks one believes—to be her lover, if she has just had tea with him, she will reply, “I saw him just before lunch.” Between these two statements the only difference is that one is false and the other true, but each is as innocent or, if you like, as guilty as the other. So it would be difficult to understand why the mistress (or here, M. de Charlus) invariably chooses the falsehood, if one did not know that their replies are determined, in a way unknown to the speaker, by a number of factors which seems so disproportionate to the triviality of the issue that it seems absurd to dwell on them. But for a physicist the position of the tiniest ball of pith is explained by the action, the clash or the equilibrium of the same forces of attraction or repulsion whose laws govern much greater worlds.

Man is always the master, even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his "household." When he begins to reflect upon his condition, and to search diligently for the Law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence, and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues. Such is the conscious master, and man can only thus become by discovering within himself the laws of thought; which discovery is totally a matter of application, self analysis, and experience. Only by much searching and mining, are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being, if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul; and that he is the maker of his character, the moulder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove, if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances, linking cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, and utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, everyday occurrence, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself which is Understanding, Wisdom, Power. In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that "He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened;" for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge.

Let’s say a man really loves a woman; he sees her as his equal, his ally, his colleague; but she enters this other realm and becomes unfathomable. In the krypton spotlight, which he doesn’t even see, she falls ill, out of his caste, and turns into an untouchable. He may know her as confident; she stands on the bathroom scale and sinks into a keening of self-abuse. He knows her as mature; she comes home with a failed haircut, weeping from a vexation she is ashamed even to express. He knows her as prudent; she goes without winter boots because she spent half a week’s paycheck on artfully packaged mineral oil. He knows her as sharing his love of the country; she refuses to go with him to the seaside until her springtime fast is ended. She’s convivial; but she rudely refuses a slice of birthday cake, only to devour the ruins of anything at all in a frigid light at dawn. Nothing he can say about this is right. He can’t speak. Whatever he says hurts her more. If he comforts her by calling the issue trivial, he doesn’t understand. It isn’t trivial at all. If he agrees with her that it’s serious, even worse: He can’t possibly love her, he thinks she’s fat and ugly. If he says he loves her just as she is, worse still: He doesn’t think she’s beautiful. If he lets her know that he loves her because she’s beautiful, worst of all, though she can’t talk about this to anyone. That is supposed to be what she wants most in the world, but it makes her feel bereft, unloved, and alone. He is witnessing something he cannot possibly understand. The mysteriousness of her behavior keeps safe in his view of his lover a zone of incomprehension. It protects a no-man’s-land, an uninhabitable territory between the sexes, wherever a man and a woman might dare to call a ceasefire. Maybe he throws up his hands. Maybe he grows irritable or condescending. Unless he enjoys the power over her this gives him, he probably gets very bored. So would the woman if the man she loved were trapped inside something so pointless, where nothing she might say could reach him. Even where a woman and a man have managed to build and inhabit that sand castle—an equal relationship—this is the unlistening tide; it ensures that there will remain a tag on the woman that marks her as the same old something else, half child, half savage.

The issue of who will throw the garbage won’t be so trivial when no one is throwing it away, and it starts to stink. When the plates pile up in the kitchen sink, or when the bathroom is grimy and the shampoo ran out. No, it won’t be funny then.

Lord, how easily I sometimes allow myself to be sidetracked by trivial concerns and petty issues. Guide me and keep me on the righteous path, doing Your work here on earth.

Fortunately, these problems are not inevitable features of capitalism but the results of fixable mistakes of public policy. Public policy has gone wrong because of the trivialization generated by the strident rivalry of antiquated ideologies. The ideology of the right asserts faith in ‘the market’ and denigrates all policy intervention. Its solution is ‘get the government off the back of business: deregulate!’ The ideology of the left denigrates capitalism and condemns the managers of firms and funds as greedy. Its solution is state control of companies, and state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Both these fundamentalist ideologies are ill-founded, but between them they have set the terms of public discussion, impeding productive thought. The starting point for a new approach is to recognize that the role of the large corporation in society has never properly been thought through. The boards that run large companies are taking decisions of overarching importance for society. Yet their present structure is the result of individual, unco-ordinated decisions, each of which happened to lead to some further decision that had not been anticipated. The system of corporate governance has lacked any process remotely equivalent to the intense and shrewd public discussion, embodied by the Federalist papers, that produced the American Constitution and its system of national governance. Public policies towards business have been incremental, and so have never properly addressed the fundamental issue of control. Any viable solution must begin with rebalancing the interests in which the power of control is legally vested.

My conception stands opposed to social science as a set of bureaucratic techniques which inhibit social inquiry by ‘methodolocigal’ pretentions, which congest such work by obscurantist conceptions, or which trivialize it by concern with minor problems unconnected with publicly relevant issues.

In his review of Hacker's and Maxwell Bennett's 2003 book Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Churchland argues that Hacker's and Bennett's criticisms of recent neurological theory: do no more than highlight the independently obvious fact that the new theory violates some of the default conceptions of the average ten-year-old. But where is the crime in this? Why should we make those baseline expectations permanently critical for the meaningful use of the terms at issue? Were we permanently to cleave the standards of 'conceptual hygiene' thus imposed by [Bennett and Hacker], we would be doomed to only the most trivial of scientific advances. For our conceptual innovations would then be confined to what is currently taken, by the average ten-year-old, to define 'the bounds of sense.' Churchland's charge is that Hacker and Bennett are simply imposing standards of conceptual hygiene that, if actually implemented, would hinder a sort of spontaneous linguistic imagination that is essential to scientific progress - and, I would add, to our everyday life with language as well.

no” gets you past emotional issues and trivial issues to essential issues. We want decision-based negotiation, not the emotion-based waste of time known as win-win.

God is the placebo for the masses, it may solve trivial problems of society, but to treat the big issues, what is required is actual medicine, that is, actual, tangible human intervention.

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain.

I do not wish to give the impression by what I have said that, behind all the intemperance and extravagance of these men, there is not a vein of genuine feeling and even at times of something like real heroism. The trouble is that all this fervor and intensity is wasted on side issues and trivial matters. It does not connect itself with anything that is helpful and constructive. These crusaders, as nearly as I can see, are fighting windmills.

Ask yourself whether the problem will matter in a year or two. If not, it may be a trivial issue unworthy of your concern.

The crisis must be examined from different angles. To anyone else but that boy or girl sitting across from you, the crisis may seem trivial. In his or her mind, though, it has taken on monumental proportions. "De-catastrophize" the issues where possible. Identify the most realistic and promising alternatives.

If only my issues were as trivial as matters of the heart.

The presidential election itself had avoided real issues; there was no clear understanding of which interests would gain and which would lose if certain policies were adopted. It took the usual form of election campaigns, concealing the basic similarity of the parties by dwelling on personalities, gossip, trivialities. Henry Adams, an astute literary commentator on that era, wrote to a friend about the election: We are here plunged in politics funnier than words can express. Very great issues are involved…. But the amusing thing is that no one talks about real interests. By common consent they agree to let these alone. We are afraid to discuss them. Instead of this the press is engaged in a most amusing dispute whether Mr. Cleveland had an illegitimate child and did or did not live with more than one mistress.

Invalidating Environment Most parents, upon seeing this intense emotional reaction to a seemingly (to them) minor issue, will be confused and upset themselves. When confronted by your child’s painful emotions, you’ll try to find ways to help her feel better, sometimes by inadvertently trivializing or dismissing her emotions. When you are not aware of your child’s emotional sensitivity, you may (1) attempt to help her get over her feelings by saying things like “It’s really nothing” or “Just forget about it”; (2) try to comfort or reassure her with statements like “It’s okay,” “Don’t worry about it,” or “Tomorrow will be a better day”; or (3) try to fix the situation or give advice by saying something like “Did you talk to your teacher about that problem?” or “Next time, why don’t you do it this way?” For many children, these statements may help them feel better and move on. For your child who has emotional intensity, these statements may actually serve to “invalidate” how she feels, making it seem as though her feelings don’t matter or do not make sense. The impact of the invalidating environment. A child who feels her emotions intensely will become quite confused when the environment (parents, teachers, friends, and so on) around her dismisses, trivializes, or questions what she’s feeling. This response invalidates the child’s experience. She will begin to wonder why she feels awful when others say it isn’t a big deal or what is wrong with her that she feels something that others tell her not to feel.

Even when they’re required to complete something more involved, the habit of frequently checking inboxes ensures that these issues remain at the forefront of their attention. Gallagher teaches us that this is a foolhardy way to go about your day, as it ensures that your mind will construct an understanding of your working life that’s dominated by stress, irritation, frustration, and triviality. The world represented by your inbox, in other words, isn’t a pleasant world to inhabit.

澳洲ANU毕业证高仿办理咨询Q微202 661 44 33如何购买澳大利亚国立大学高仿毕业证成绩单办ANU毕业证学历认证书如何购买澳洲毕业证办理澳大利亚国立大学毕业证|购买ANU毕业证|Q微2026614433|购买ANU购买出售澳洲毕业证|购买澳洲文凭TheAustralianNationalUniversity SLKSMS《SM《SNM《SSN《MSSNM《NSM《SNSM《SSMSHSHSJSKHSJKS The US Forest Service seems to see the solution to any issue with forests as ”the business end of a chainsaw.” That’s from Chad Hanson, in his fairly terrifying book Smokescreen. It doesn’t matter if the issue is serious, trivial or even positive. The Forest Service (FS) is all about logging federal woods. The excuses it comes up with are comically classic evil. But the result is disastrously real for numerous species, while making piles of money for the FS and its friendly neighborhood loggers.

This is how the press secretary works on trivial issues where there is no motivation to support one side or the other. If thinking is confirmatory rather than exploratory in these dry and easy cases, then what chance is there that people will think in an open-minded, exploratory way when self-interest, social identity, and strong emotions make them want or even need to reach a preordained conclusion

Maybe it is just easier to focus on life’s trivial missteps when the real challenges feel so insurmountable. But by doing this aren’t we also exhausting ourselves on petty grievances and leaving nothing in the tank for the real issues?

When we stop valuing something, it ceases to be fun or interesting to us. Therefore, there is no sense of loss, no sense of missing out when we stop doing it. On the contrary, we look back and wonder how we ever spent so much time caring about such a silly, trivial thing, why we wasted so much energy on issues and causes that didn’t matter.

MMT recognizes that finance is not a limited resource. It is manufactured and created in the act of spending. In the modern world, the exclusive monopoly to issue the currency endows governments with unparalleled spending power. For MMT, that the issuer can spend without technical constraints is a rather trivial observation. What MMT stresses is that taxes and borrowing cannot pre-fund the issuer of the currency, as the currency must be provided before it can be used for tax collections or bond purchases. The substantive question for MMT then is how to deploy this spending power for achieving the two central macroeconomic goals: full employment and price stability.

Et cela dure toute la vie : bébé, enfant, adolescente, lycéenne, étudiante, salariée, épouse, mère de famille, une femme est traitée comme une femme, jusqu’à ce que le sexe et le genre coïncident parfaitement, selon l’idéal que chaque société se fixe : serrer les jambes quand on est assise, ne pas parler trop haut, être belle et avoir honte des imperfections de son corps, ne jamais faire le premier pas en amour, brider son ambition professionnelle. À l’issue d’un long enseignement silencieux, les femmes deviennent des créatures-pour-autrui, oblates empathiques, douloureusement réflexives, privées de cette légitimité de naissance que le masculin confère aux hommes. Même le langage incorpore les apprentissages de genre : aux États-Unis, les femmes ont davantage recours aux protections (I think, sort of, like), aux questions (isn’t it ?) et aux intensifiants (so, really, oh my God), de telle sorte que leur discours apparaît à la fois trivial et dépourvu d’autorité.

[Alice Walker] has been constantly showing me that poetry is everywhere around us, even in the most trivial or unnoticed things, because they all share or add something to the complex and total function and sense of life. So poems--which can be not just verses but pieces of prose and reflection as well--result from the finding of a proper, personal, and effective voice that can utter in a compelling and moving way the meaningful issues that the author finds behind ordinary and obvious phenomena.

The cause of the complete collapse of the Russian Orthodox Church is a great lesson for us. Its leaders had argued for years over such trivial issues as what the priests should wear on the pulpit, that is, whether their garments should be blue, red, or black. When they were thus fighting amongst themselves over such absurd questions, do you know what happened in Russia? The Communist Revolution broke out, and the communists imprisoned all the religionists and killed them. When Christians were misplacing their minds and interests in such absurd issues, Satan dealt a devastating blow to them.

Life Lessons Fear is nothing but paralysis of the mind. It is like a termite that attacks a healthy tree and soon leaves it hollow, weak, and broken. It is not problems that cause fear but fear that causes problems. The full form of fear is ‘False Evidence Accepted [as] Real’. Most problems in life exist only in the mind. In reality, they are not problems at all; the mind can make every trivial issue seem like the end of the world. In reality, we are much stronger than we think. Half the battle is won by physical strength but the other half is won only by mental strength. Getting halfway is getting nowhere. The mind can carry you much farther than your body can. The mind is unstoppable when filled with courage but inconsolable when filled with fear. While a strong positive mind is your best friend, a fear-filled negative mind is your worst enemy.

The shallow social and political alternatives bequeathed to contemporary western society by the Enlightenment and its aftermath, in which every issue stands either to left or to the right on some hypothetical spectrum, and every political question can be answered in terms of ‘for’ or ‘against’ – this trivialized world of thought cannot cope with the complexities of real life either in the first or the twenty-first century.

This is not a trivial obstacle when it comes to the problems of expert engagement with the public: nearly 30 percent of Americans, for example, think “a secretive elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world,” and 15 percent think media or government add secret “mind-controlling” technology to TV broadcasts. (Another 15 percent aren’t quite sure about the television issue.)

Not a hunch. A fact. Some small, trivial fact. What was it? Could it be the answer? Something was bothering me terrifically. I tried some more beer. No. No. No ... no ... no ... no ... no. The answer wouldn’t come. How must our minds be made? So complicated that a detail gets lost in the maze of knowledge. Why? That damn ever-present WHY. There’s a why to everything. It was there, but how to bring it out? I tried thinking around the issue, I tried to think through it. I even tried to forget it, but the greater the effort, the more intense the failure.

Mistakes to Avoid This is not a story about sharing (i.e., the boy who shared his lunch). The boy is mentioned only in John, and even there his willingness is not mentioned. The boy may have been willing, but that should no more be the focus than should sitting in groups of a particular size or helping to clean up after the meal. These are trivial issues. The reference in all four Gospels to the five loaves and two fish emphasizes how little there was to begin with. Other details not to emphasize include the disciples’ incredulity at the number fed; or God taking little things and turning them into something great; or Jesus praying before the meal was eaten, or the disciples gathering up the leftover food, which is included to indicate the magnitude of the multiplication, not that they let nothing go to waste. In teaching younger ages, the emphasis should be simply that Jesus is God and that he cares about the people and is taking care of them. Older groups may be able to understand more about the messianic banquet and the connections to Moses, Elijah, and Elisha.

When students come in to see me, I hear complaint after complaint: about the schedule of the retreat, about the food, about the service, about me, on and on. But the issues that people bring to me are no more relevant or important than a “trivial” event such as stubbing a toe. How do we place our cushions? How do we brush our teeth? How do we sweep the floor, or slice a carrot? We think we’re here to deal with “more important” issues, such as our problems with our partner, our jobs, our health, and the like. We don’t want to bother with the “little” things, like how we hold our chopsticks, or where we place our spoon. Yet these acts are the stuff of our life, moment to moment. It’s not a question of importance, it’s a question of paying attention, being aware. Why? Because every moment in life is absolute in itself. That’s all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this. So when we don’t pay attention to each little this, we miss the whole thing. And the contents of this can be anything. This can be straightening our sitting mats, chopping an onion, visiting someone we don’t want to visit. It doesn’t matter what the contents of the moment are; each moment is absolute. That’s all there is, and all there ever will be. If we could totally pay attention, we would never be upset. If we’re upset, it’s axiomatic that we’re not paying attention. If we miss not just one moment, but one moment after another, we’re in trouble.

Of course, problems come in threes, or at least twos. Rarely onesies. Major Truman Preston could hear the First Family screaming at each other and could care less. What worried him was that the White House was in lockdown, the president seemed a bit off his rocker, and he couldn’t get an outside line on his Department of Defense–issue cell phone. He needed to check in with his supervisor at the Pentagon, but neither cell nor landlines were working. So he sat on the second floor of the Residence, tucked away in a corner, a position he was more than used to, and held the football on his lap. Forty-five pounds of deadweight, with the emphasis on the dead. The surface of the case was dinged and battered and bruised from years of traveling. The damn case was older than he was. You’d think someone would have made the decision to swap the old thing out for a new case. Although the interior was updated with the latest electronics, never the outside. Tradition mattered, even in apparently trivial ways. Despite the turmoil raging and the lack of communication, Preston was his usual calm self

Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum. This was classic Musk. The e-mail is rough in its tone and yet not really unwarranted for a guy who just wants things done as efficiently as possible. It obsesses over something that other people might find trivial and yet he has a definite point. It’s comical in that Musk wants all acronym approvals to run directly through him, but that’s entirely in keeping with the hands-on management style that has, mainly, worked well at both SpaceX and Tesla. Employees have since dubbed the acronym policy the ASS Rule.

Instructions on how to dust a table or mow the lawn, or, as in the above example, what library fines are due. Psychologists studying the issue say it’s because many people who are considering suicide have lost the ability to distinguish trivial matters from important ones. Others say that what may seem trivial to you and me, might not be to the author. At the end of the day, paying a library fine is about integrity, after all.