Violence Is Never The Answer Quotes

Violence is never the answer but sometimes, like with cockroaches, it is the only possible response.

Violence?"Skulduggery said. "Violence is never the answer, until it's the only answer.

The woman knows from living with the abusive man that there are no simple answers. Friends say: “He’s mean.” But she knows many ways in which he has been good to her. Friends say: “He treats you that way because he can get away with it. I would never let someone treat me that way.” But she knows that the times when she puts her foot down the most firmly, he responds by becoming his angriest and most intimidating. When she stands up to him, he makes her pay for it—sooner or later. Friends say: “Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance. He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he is, she may know that he will become dangerous when she tries to leave him. She may even be concerned that he will try to take her children away from her, as some abusers do.

Violence should never be the answer. Aye, in a perfect world. But sometimes animals don't understand anything but their own language.

As for my own part I care not for death, for all men are mortal; and though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.

It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicle that you realize that violence is never the answer.

If we can use an H-bomb--and as you said it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around--isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What's the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?' Zim didn't answer at once, which wasn't like him at all. Then he said softly, 'Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.' Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, 'Speak up!' I'm not itching to resign, sir. I'm going to sweat out my term.' I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn't really qualified to answer . . . and one that you shouldn't ask me. You're supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?' What? Sure--yes, sir.' Then you've heard the answer. But I'll give you my own--unofficial--views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cuts its head off?' Why . . . no, sir!' Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how--or why--he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people--"older and wiser heads," as they say--supply the control. Which is as it should be. That's the best answer I can give you. If it doesn't satisfy you, I'll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can't convince you--then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.

Violence is never the answer. Unless someone replies to your text with a phone call. Then fuck them up.

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc. There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence. So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism. No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Language is the proper way to communicate, followed closely by five balled up fingers forming a fist and flying at a face. Violence is never the answer—unless the question is: What the fuck are you going to do about it?

There is no Situation in which Arms can get an Answer. Arms only ensure, that there would Never be an Answer.

How come he cannot recognize his own cruelty now turned against him? How come he can't see his own savagery as a colonist in the savagery of these oppressed peasants who have absorbed it through every pore and for which they can find no cure? The answer is simple: this arrogant individual, whose power of authority and fear of losing it has gone to his head, has difficulty remembering he was once a man; he thinks he is a whip or a gun; he is convinced that the domestication of the "inferior races" is obtained by governing their reflexes. He disregards the human memory, the indelible reminders; and then, above all, there is this that perhaps he never know: we only become what we are by radically negating deep down what others have done to us.

Violence is never the answer.

Violence is never the answer.” A milder version of what the cops had told her. “No, ma’am,” Maggie agreed. “It isn’t.” Except when it was, sometimes.

Why Does He Do That? That's the number one question, isn't it? Maybe it's his drinking, you say. Maybe it's his learning disabilities. It's his job; he hates it. He's stressed. I think he's bipolar. It's his mother's fault; she spoiled him rotten. It's the drugs. If only he didn't use. It's his temper. He's selfish. It's the pornography; he's obsessed. The list could go on and on. You could spend many years trying to pinpoint it and never get a definite answer. The fact is, many people have these problems and they aren't abusive. Just because someone is an alcoholic doesn't mean he is abusive. Men hate their jobs all the time and aren't abusive. Bipolar? Okay. Stressed? Who isn't! Do you see where I am going with this? Off the subject a bit, when someone commits a violent crime, they always report in the news about his possible motive. As human beings, we need to somehow make sense of things. If someone murders someone, do you think it makes the family of the victim feel better to know the murderer's motive? No. Except for self-defense, there really is no excuse for murder. Motive, if there is any, is irrelevant. The same is true of abuse. You could spend your whole life going round and round trying to figure out why. The truth is, the why doesn't matter. There are only two reasons why men commit abuse—because they want to do so and because they can. You want to know why. In many ways, you might feel like you need to know. But, if you could come up with a reason or a motive, it wouldn't help you. Maybe you believe that if you did this or that differently, he wouldn't have abused you. That is faulty thinking and won't help you get better. You didn't do anything to cause the abuse. No matter what you said, no matter what you did, you didn't deserve to be abused. You are the victim and it won't help you to know why he supposedly abused you. No matter what his reason, there is no excuse for abuse. You are not to blame.

Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person’s face that anything changes. All empires are hungry cannibals...

When [an abusive man] tells me that he became abusive because he lost control of himself, I ask him why he didn’t do something even worse. For example, I might say, “You called her a fucking whore, you grabbed the phone out of her hand and whipped it across the room, and then you gave her a shove and she fell down. There she was at your feet where it would have been easy to kick her in the head. Now, you have just finished telling me that you were ‘totally out of control’ at that time, but you didn’t kick her. What stopped you?” And the client can always give me a reason. Here are some common explanations: “I wouldn’t want to cause her a serious injury.” “I realized one of the children was watching.” “I was afraid someone would call the police.” “I could kill her if I did that.” “The fight was getting loud, and I was afraid the neighbors would hear.” And the most frequent response of all: “Jesus, I wouldn’t do that. I would never do something like that to her.” The response that I almost never heard – I remember hearing it twice in the fifteen years – was: “I don’t know.” These ready answers strip the cover off of my clients’ loss of control excuse.

She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William’s eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought). Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. . . . [N]o, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? Express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have – to want and want – how that wrung the heart, and wrung again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness. . . . A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she could not say. . . . She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably – how “you” and “I” and “she” pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it “remained for ever,” she was going to say, or, for the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself – Oh, yes! – in every other way. Was she crying then for Mrs. Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr. Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? – startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.

Because violence is never the answer," Arthur said. Talia smiled sweetly. "But it can be the question." "I can," Arthur allowed. "But I believe the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is our voices. And I am going to use my voice for you, and for me. Hate is loud. We are louder.

Years ago, I was yapping to my mother about Buffy and Xena and talking about how great it is that we now have these TV shows about such strong female characters. My mother, who admittedly has never watched either show, asked me if these really WERE strong female characters, or if they were merely male characters with boobs. Having a blonde cheerleader save the world with her martial arts skills doesn't equal feminism, she said. That's a male tactic. How about her saving the day using tactics that aren't all about punching and kicking and killing? I didn't have an answer for her then. I still don't, even now. There's a whole debate to be had that I'm just not ready for, that I may never be ready for. My mother is a pacifist. I am not. We see the world differently, we operate differently, even though we want the same things. We both want equality and peace. My mother is the sort to talk her way to equality and peace. I'm the sort to talk to the point where I reckon more talk won't do any good, and then smash my way through to an understanding. It is not an enlightened viewpoint I hold. It is a crass, brutish viewpoint — but in a crass, brutish world, I believe my way is the way to go. Mum believes otherwise. And that's the difference, I think, between us. We live in a world carved by men, where fear and oppression and violence are a part of our lives. I can't even IMAGINE a world sculpted by women, where other values have taken hold. I'm limited in that way. I could try not to be, but I honestly wouldn't know where to start. That's kind of sad, when you think about it. For all my imagination, I can't even imagine that... ... (turns to stare hauntingly out the window).

Violence never solved anything,” the Jacobite answered with the grim finality of a hippy who’d never once read a history book, ever.

The average person wastes his life. He has a great deal of energy but he wastes it. The life of an average person seems at the end utterly meaningless…without significance. When he looks back…what has he done? MIND The mind creates routine for its own safety and convenience. Tradition becomes our security. But when the mind is secure it is in decay. We all want to be famous people…and the moment we want to be something…we are no longer free. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential…the what is. It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything new…and in that there’s joy. To awaken this capacity in oneself and in others is real education. SOCIETY It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals…whereas culture has invented a single mold to which we must conform. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person because he conforms to a pattern. He repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. What happens to your heart and your mind when you are merely imitative, naturally they wither, do they not? The great enemy of mankind is superstition and belief which is the same thing. When you separate yourself by belief tradition by nationally it breeds violence. Despots are only the spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power which is in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared there will be confusion and classes…hate and wars. A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country to any religion to any political party. He is concerned with the understanding of mankind. FEAR You have religion. Yet the constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. You can only be afraid of what you think you know. One is never afraid of the unknown…one is afraid of the known coming to an end. A man who is not afraid is not aggressive. A man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free and peaceful mind. You want to be loved because you do not love…but the moment you really love, it is finished. You are no longer inquiring whether someone loves you or not. MEDITATION The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. In meditation you will discover the whisperings of your own prejudices…your own noises…the monkey mind. You have to be your own teacher…truth is a pathless land. The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are…where you are going…what the end is. Down deep we all understand that it is truth that liberates…not your effort to be free. The idea of ourselves…our real selves…is your escape from the fact of what you really are. Here we are talking of something entirely different….not of self improvement…but the cessation of self. ADVICE Take a break with the past and see what happens. Release attachment to outcomes…inside you will feel good no matter what. Eventually you will find that you don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom…it is timeless spiritual truth. If you can really understand the problem the answer will come out of it. The answer is not separate from the problem. Suffer and understand…for all of that is part of life. Understanding and detachment…this is the secret. DEATH There is hope in people…not in societies not in systems but only in you and me. The man who lives without conflict…who lives with beauty and love…is not frightened by death…because to love is to die.

Men are destroyed, and destroy each other, over basic things – money or hatred. On the other hand a really complicated riddle never pushed anyone to violence; either you found the answer or gave up looking. Clouds were riddles too, but dangerously simple ones. If you zoomed in on one part of a cloud and took a photograph, then enlarged the image, you would find that a cloud’s edges seemed like another cloud, and those edges yet another, and so on. Every part of a cloud, in other words, reiterates the whole. Therefore each cloud might be called infinite, because its very surface is composed of other clouds, and those clouds of still other clouds, and so forth. Some learn to lean over the abyss of these brainteasers; others lose their balance and tumble into its eternal blackness.

A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers. They would both remain perfectly content to linger in the liminal, endless space between truth and denial

When the film Baise-Moi was banned from the screen, lots of women (men didn't dare comment on that subject) stood up to publicly declare, "How revolting, we absolutely must not consider that violence is an answer to rape." Why not? You never see news items about girls -- alone or in gangs -- biting off the dicks of men who attack them, or trailing their attackers to kill them or beat them lifeless...but women still feel the need to say that violence is not the answer. And yet, if men were to fear having their dicks slashed to pieces with a carpet knife should they try to force a woman, they would soon become much better at controlling their "masculine" urges and understanding that "no" means "no".

Later, when everything went sideways and the world broke in half, Robin would think back to this day, to this hour at this table, and wonder why they had been so quick, so carelessly eager to trust one another. Why had they refused to see the myriad ways they could hurt each other? Why had they not paused to interrogate their differences in birth, in raising, that meant they were not and could never be on the same side? But the answer was obvious – that they were all four of them drowning in the unfamiliar, and they saw in each other a raft, and clinging to one another was the only way to stay afloat.

As he alighted his name had been called out of dreams. The violence went out of his heart, and a purity that he had never imagined dwelt there instead. His friend had called him. He stood for a moment entranced, then the new emotion found him words, and laying his hand very gently upon the pillows he answered 'Clive!

We’re so used to equating “good guy” and “victim” that imagining ourselves on the winning end of a real, life-or-death fight seems impossible, almost forbidden. With that attitude, if you ever find yourself in a fight for your life, it’s basically over before it has even begun. CRIMINALS NEVER SEE THEMSELVES AS THE VICTIM

Joanna shook her head and said: But I mean, does he know what they're like? Marianne couldn't answer that. She feels that even she doesn't know what her family are like, that she's never adequate in her attempt to describe them, that she oscillates between exaggerating their behavior, which makes her feel guilty, or downplaying it, which also makes her feel guilty, but a different guilt, more inwardly directed. Joanna believes that she knows what Marianne's family are like, but how can she, how can anyone, when Marianne herself doesn't? Of course Connell can't. He's a well-adjusted person raised in a loving home. He just assumes the best of everyone and knows nothing.

One wonders why no one in church history has ever been considered a heretic for being unloving. People were anathematized and often tortured and killed for disagreeing on matters of doctrine or on the authority of the church. But no one on record has ever been so much as rebuked for not loving as Christ loved. Yet if love is to be placed above all other considerations (Col. 3:14; 1 Peter 4:8), if nothing has any value apart from love (1 Cor. 13:1–3), and if the only thing that matters is faith working in love (Gal. 5:6), how is it that possessing Christlike love has never been considered the central test of orthodoxy? How is it that those who tortured and burned heretics were not themselves considered heretics for doing so? Was this not heresy of the worst sort? How is it that those who perpetrated such things were not only not deemed heretics but often were (and yet are) held up as “heroes of the faith”? If there is an answer to this question, I believe it lies in the deceptive power of the sword. While God uses the sword of governments to preserve law, order, and justice, as we have seen, there is a corrupting principality and power always at work. Much like the magical ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the sword has a demonic power to deceive us. When we pick it up, we come under its power. It convinces us that our use of violence is a justified means to a noble end. It intoxicates us with the unquenchable dream of redemptive violence and blinds us to our own iniquities, thereby making us feel righteous in overpowering the unrighteousness of others. Most of the slaughtering done throughout history has been done by people who sincerely believed they were promoting “the good.” Everyone thinks their wars are just, if not holy. Marxists, Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Islamic terrorists, and Christian crusaders have this in common.

In the name of stability and security, they condemn only the violence that challenges the status quo, never the violence that perpetuates it. Yet those of us born of the streets know full well that stability and security have only ever existed for the elites! Violence is indeed the answer when the question is whether we ought to endure exploitation so others can live in luxury!

In the Gospel of Luke, just at the crucial moment, Jesus too is in the courtyard, and the two—Jesus and Peter—exchange a look that pierces the disciple's heart. The question that Peter reads in this look, “Why do you persecute me?” Paul will hear as well from Jesus’ own mouth: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” In response to Paul's question “Who are you, Lord?” Jesus answers, “I am Jesus whom you persecute.” Christian conversion is always this question that Christ himself asks. Because of the simple fact that we live in a world whose structure is based on mimetic processes and victim mechanisms, from which we all profit without knowing it, we are all accessories to the Crucifixion, persecutors of Christ. The Resurrection empowers Peter and Paul, as well as all believers after them, to understand that all imprisonment in sacred violence is violence done to Christ. Humankind is never the victim of God; God is always the victim of humankind.

Jesus' answer to violent reasonableness is an unreasonable love. It is not reasonable to counter imperial violence with a Cross-shaped love. It is not reasonable to say, with Dr. Cornel West, that every child's life is worth the same--that a brown child's life is as precious as a white child's to a Palestinian child's life is as precious as an Israeli child's. It isn't reasonable to ground a society on such a vision, because there has never been a human order grounded on such a vision. It isn't reasonable, but it's right.

In certain young people today…I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well mexecuted in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship. I find it obscene. People who ask you to ‘educate’ yourself while not having actually read any books themselves, while not being able to intelligently defend their own ideological positions, because by ‘educate,’ they actually mean ‘parrot what I say, flatten all nuance, wish away complexity.’ People who wield the words ‘violence’ and ‘weaponize’ like tarnished pitchforks. People who depend on obfuscation, who have no compassion for anybody genuinely curious or confused. Ask them a question and you are told that the answer is to repeat a mantra. Ask again for clarity and be accused of violence. And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow.

...when people don't like you, you don't like yourself either, that's the way it goes, you learn to give certain answers to certain questions because that's the answer the person asking the question wants to hear, and before long you are inevitably caught up in a web of lies, lies that people are forced into telling because the truth doesn't make an impression, because the truth always fails, because it's never good enough. What can you do if your story, which is so tragic that you imagine it will awaken people's sympathy, instead elicits hatred and violence?

I prefer to think of standing before a vast lake on a windless day: the surface smooth until one of us—say, you, Sal—picks up a stone and tosses it into the water. What happens then?” “It causes ripples,” Phee said. “Yes,” Arthur said. “And what if you, Phee, picked up your own stone and threw it in along with Sal? And the rest of you did the same? The ripples would bounce off each other, spreading in new directions, growing as more people toss their stones in. And if we keep on doing it, who knows how far the ripples could reach in the end?” Sal nodded. “We keep on throwing stones until someone listens.” “I don’t know why we just don’t throw stones at them,” Talia muttered. “Seems to be a waste of a good rock if you ask me.” “Because violence is never the answer,” Arthur said. Talia smiled sweetly. “But it can be the question.” “It can,” Arthur allowed. “But I believe the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is our voices. And I am going to use my voice for you, and for me. Hate is loud. We are louder.” “What if they don’t listen?” Phee asked. “What if they don’t care what you have to say? What if they come here and try and take us away again?” “They wouldn’t get very far,” Zoe said, the flowers in her hair opening and closing.

Oh, lady, there aren’t words for it. I don’t know—it’s the difference between a pair of roller skates and a Ferrari—ah, there aren’t words.’ ‘I think the lady doth protest too much. You wouldn’t promote such blatant lesbian propaganda if you were sure of yourself and your sexual identity.’ ‘Propaganda? I took a few minutes to try to answer a question you asked me. If you want to see blatant propaganda then look at the ads in the subways, magazines, t.v., everywhere. The big pigs use heterosexuality and women’s bodies to sell everything in this country—even violence. Damn, you people are so bad off you got to have computers to match you up these days.’ Polina began to get angry, but then she took some time to think about what I had laid on her. ‘I never thought of it that way, I mean about advertising and all.’ ‘Well, I sure have. You don’t see ads of women kissing to get you to buy Salem cigarettes, do you?’ She laughed. ‘That’s funny, that’s truly funny. Why the entire world must look different to you.’ ‘It does. It looks destructive, diseased, and corroded. People have no selves anymore (maybe they never had them in the first place) so their home base is their sex—their genitals, who they fuck. It’s enough to make a chicken laugh.’ ‘I—are all homosexuals as perceptive as you?

Washington Post, was recorded in the “Special China Series,” documents issued by the State Department in August, 1969, but came to the notice of the public only when reported by Terence Smith in the New York Times. Mao and Chou En-lai, it turns out, approached President Roosevelt in January, 1945, “trying to establish relations with the United States in order to avoid total dependence on the Soviet Union” (italics added). It seems that Ho Chi Minh never received an answer, and information of the Chinese approach was suppressed because, as Professor Allen Whiting has commented, it contradicted “the image of monolithic Communism directed from Moscow.

I asked her what she would do if her teenage daughter was beaten up by a boyfriend. “Well, I’d probably kill the guy, but one thing’s for sure: I’d tell her she could never see him again.” “What is the difference between you and your daughter?” I asked. Janine, who had a fast explanation for every aspect of her husband’s behavior, had no answer for her own, so I offered her one: “The difference is that your daughter has you—and you don’t have you. If you don’t get out soon, your daughter won’t have you either.” This was resonant to Janine because of its truth: she really didn’t have a part of herself, the self-protective part. She had come out of her own childhood with it already shaken, and her husband had beaten it out completely. She did, however, retain the instinct to protect her children, and it was for them that she was finally able to leave.

Would I ever let this knife hurt you?" His boots touch the tips of mine, and he leans into my space. "Of course not." The shadows slowly take the blade closer to Xaden's throat, and I grab for the hilt, yanking it away and tossing it to the desk before he can accidentally nick himself. His smile flashes, then fades. "Hey, Violence?" "What?" I snap. "There's a knife in the armoire." His hands slides to the nape of my neck, and he leans in, narrowing the world to just the two of us. "All you had to do was ask, even if you weren't aware it was coming, you know I'd never let it hurt you. I'm not the one you don't trust." I scoff. "What is that supposed to mean?" "Love, you're the smartest person I know. If you actually wanted the answers, you'd ask the right questions." His voice softens as his thumb sweeps along my jawline. "You knew about the deal. Maybe the question you need to be asking is why you didn't confront me about it." "Because I love you!

I believed I was doomed to lose you,” Hyacinthe says, in a voice so soft Oak can barely hear it. For a long moment, they are quiet. It seems unlikely they are going to break into violence. Oak should go up the rest of the stairs. He doesn’t want to invade their privacy more than he already has. He needs to go slowly, though, so they don’t hear his hooves. “Joy is never guaranteed,” Tiernan says, his voice gentle. “But you can wed yourself to pain. I suppose, at least in that, there is no chance of surprise.” Oak winces at those words. Wed yourself to pain. “Why would you want me after all I have done?” Hyacinthe asks, anguished. “Why does anyone want anyone else?” Tiernan answers. “We do not love because people deserve it—nor would I want to be loved because I was the most deserving of some list of candidates. I want to be loved for my worst self as well as my best. I want to be forgiven my flaws.” “I find it harder to forgive your virtues,” Hyacinthe tells him, a smile in his voice. And then Oak is up the stairs far enough to be unable to hear the rest. Which is good, because he hopes it involves a lot of kissing.

Mrs. Hamilton gave him a pitying look. She didn’t believe it any more than her brother did. “We’ve all heard the stories.” “Well, they died here, or died running from here. Who do you think does the killing? It’s them. They come to work every day like killing people is nothing. How can they do that? How can they kill kids and nobody does anything?” Mrs. Hamilton strained to think of a good answer, or maybe another lie, but she couldn’t reply to him for a time. “It’s wrong,” she said. “As wrong as anything I’ve ever seen.” Hearing the truth made Robert’s bones heavy. He sobbed into Mrs. Hamilton’s arms. If she’d been Mama, she would have hugged him for a long while, patting the back of his neck, saying, All right, try to be brave like your papa, and then let him lie down and miss his chores. But she wasn’t Mama, so when the hug was cut short, he could barely stand. “Listen to me,” Mrs. Hamilton said, her words steadying him. “I know.” She’d spoken as if she’d seen it all: the dead boys in the photographs, Gloria’s map, the haint at the church. Every secret thing that only Redbone knew—had known. Robert felt dizzy when he remembered Redbone was dead. “I know what it is to have someone killed by violence—the injustice of it. It’s the worst feeling there is. My late husband, he didn’t die in the war: he got pulled off a train and beaten to death after he got back home. He never made it back to me. I carry that, Robert.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “This is yours to carry. There’s lots of people working to get you out of here, but you won’t find justice in here. If there’s any kind of justice, and I do mean if, it’s waiting outside. After

Burke was not a sentimentalist, however.43 “Leave a man to his passions,” he wrote, “and you leave a wild beast to a savage and capricious nature.”44 Rather, he argued that while politics does answer to reason, human reason does not interact directly with the world but is always mediated by our imagination, which helps us to give order and shape to the data we derive from our senses. One way or another, reason applies through the sentiments and passions, so it is crucial to tend to what he calls our “moral imagination” because left untended, it will direct our reason toward violence and disorder.45 The dark side of our sentiments is mitigated not by pure reason, but by more beneficent sentiments. We cannot be simply argued out of our vices, but we can be deterred from indulging them by the trust and love that develops among neighbors, by deeply established habits of order and peace, and by pride in our community or country. And part of the statesman’s difficult charge is keeping this balance together, acting rationally on this understanding of the limits of reason. “The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a statesman,” Burke asserts.46 It is for Burke another reason why politics can never be reduced to a simple application of logical axioms. As Burke’s contemporary William Hazlitt put it: “[Burke] knew that man had affections and passions and powers of imagination, as well as hunger and thirst and the sense of heat and cold. . . . He knew that the rules that form the basis of private morality are not founded in reason, that is, in the abstract properties of those things which are the subjects of them, but in the nature of man, and his capacity of being affected by certain things from habit, from imagination, and sentiment, as well as from reason.

Society makes a peculiar offer to its citizenry: we have a job, if you want it. Here it is. You must stand between the predators and the innocents of the world and hold the line with your blood. Pay is modest—and rendered grudgingly. You will labor across hours, long and ungodly, that will test the limits of exhaustion and tedium. Family will suffer your absence. You will miss many meaningful moments. You will find yourself shipped to places far away, forbidding, forgotten or assigned to patrol streets savaged by violence, poverty, madness. Your presence will not be welcomed. You will see tragedy, hopelessness and evil at depths that will rend your soul. You will be expected somehow, some way, to keep yourself whole as you drown in these so that you may confront them again the next day. You will be called filthy names. In the course of your duties, you will be attacked, targeted, challenged. Some will try to kill you. They may succeed. The antipathy of the press and the animosity of the public will flank you without end until your final tour of duty. Your every action, every decision, every remark will be the subject of unremitting—and unforgiving—scrutiny. Politicians will exploit you—for good and ill—and sacrifice you to expediency once the exploitation is done. Your mistakes, though honest, will never be forgiven—ever. You will save many but the one you lose will haunt you until your dying day. You will form bonds of brotherhood with your comrades, wordless in their abiding depth, forged in the rough bravery that circumstance compels. You will bury many of those brothers. You will begin each day knowing that you may never see another. This is the job that society offers its citizenry. Do you want it? For most, the answer is an obvious one: no. But for a few, the answer is just as obvious: yes. This is for the few who answer yes.

Why Does He Do That? That's the number one question, isn't it? Maybe it's his drinking, you say. Maybe it's his learning disabilities. It's his job; he hates it. He's stressed. I think he's bipolar. It's his mother's fault; she spoiled him rotten. It's the drugs. If only he didn't use. It's his temper. He's selfish. It's the pornography; he's obsessed. The list could go on and on. You could spend many years trying to pinpoint it and never get a definite answer. The fact is, many people have these problems and they aren't abusive. Just because someone is an alcoholic doesn't mean he is abusive. Men hate their jobs all the time and aren't abusive. Bipolar? Okay. Stressed? Who isn't! Do you see where I am going with this? Off the subject a bit, when someone commits a violent crime, they always report in the news about his possible motive. As human beings, we need to somehow make sense of things. If someone murders someone, do you think it makes the family of the victim feel better to know the murderer's motive? No. Except for self-defense, there really is no excuse for murder. Motive, if there is any, is irrelevant. The same is true of abuse. You could spend your whole life going round and round trying to figure out why. The truth is, the why doesn't matter. There are only two reasons why men commit abuse—because they want to do so and because they can. You want to know why. In many ways, you might feel like you need to know. But, if you could come up with a reason or a motive, it wouldn't help you. Maybe you believe that if you did this or that differently, he wouldn't have abused you. That is faulty thinking and won't help you get better. You didn't do anything to cause the abuse. No matter what you said, no matter what you did, you didn't deserve to be abused. You are the victim and it won't help you to know why he supposedly abused you. No matter what his reason, there is no excuse for abuse. You are not to blame. —Beth Praed

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right. And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points. In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc. There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence. So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism. No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

All this shows a very mediocre idea of oneself - always imputing misfortune to some objective cause. Once it has been exorcized by causes, misfortune is no longer a problem: it becomes susceptible of a causal solution and, above all, it originates elsewhere - in original sin, in history, in the social order, or in natural perversion. In short, it originates in an objectivity into which we exile it the better to be rid of it. Once again, this bespeaks very little pride and self-respect. In the past, what struck you down was your destiny, your personal fatum. You didn't look for some 'objective' cause of this or some attenuating circumstance, which would amount to saying we have no part in what happens to us. There is something humiliating in that. The intelligence of evil begins with the hypothesis that our ills come to us from an evil genius that is our own. Let us be worthy of our 'perversity' of our evil genius, let us measure up to our tragic involvement in what happens to us (including good fortune). In a word, let us not be imbeciles, for imbecility in the literal sense lies in the superficial reference to misfortune and exemption from evil. This is how we make imbeciles of the victims themselves, by confining them to their condition of victim. And by the compassion we show them we engage in a kind of false advertising for them. We take no account of what degree of choice and defiance, of connivence with oneself, of - unconscious or quasi-deliberate - provocative relation to evil there may be in AIDS, in drug-taking, in suffering and alienation, in voluntary servitude - in this acting-out in the fatal zone. It is the same with suicide, which is always ascribed to depressive motivations with no account taken of an originality of, an original will to commit, the act itself (Canetti speaks in the same way of the interpretation of dreams as a violence done to dreams that takes no account of their literalness). So, the understanding of misfortune is everywhere substituted for the intelligence of evil. Now, unlike the former, this latter rests on the rejection of the presumption of innocence. By contrast with that understanding, we are all presumptive wrongdoers - but not responsible ones, for, in the last instance, we do not have to answer for ourselves - that is the business of destiny or of the divinity. For the act we commit, it is right we should be dealt with - and indeed punished - accordingly. We are never innocent of that act in the sense of having nothing to do with it or being victims of it. But this does not mean we are answerable for it either, as that would suppose we were answerable for ourselves, that we were invested with total power over ourselves, which is a subjective illusion. It's a good thing we don't possess that power or that responsibility. A good thing we are not the causes of ourselves - that at least confers some degree of innocence on us. For the rest, we are forever complicit in what we do, even if we are not answerable to anyone. So we are both irresponsible and without excuses. Never explain, never complain.

Luna left, too, with a cheery, “Thanks for the morning entertainment. That provided a better jolt than a cup of espresso.” Then it was just Arabella, her brother, and the really, really big man, who had just turned his gaze on her. Given his threats and violent solution, Arabella should have been quaking. At the very least staring at her toes lest she incur his wrath. But the gentlest blue eyes caught hers, and his tone was soft and soothing when he addressed her. “You must be Arabella. I’m Leo, the pride’s omega.” “More like enforcer,” Jeoff muttered, still rubbing his head. “If you behave, then I don’t have to resort to my methods.” “He started it,” Jeoff accused, pointing at finger at Hayder, who emerged from the bedroom clad in low-hipped jeans that hugged his corded thighs and a soft T-shirt that clung to his chest. “Hey, it’s not my fault you jumped to the wrong conclusion when I answered the door.” “What else was I to think? You’re in my sister’s condo wearing only a rag.” “Protecting her.” “The same way you protected her last night when you took her out and flaunted her?” “I took her to dinner.” “What the hell do you mean you took her out to dinner? You put my baby sister in danger.” “She wasn’t in danger.” “They snatched her off the street!” “And I got her back.” The men glared at each, toe-to-toe, bodies bristling. Leo, who’d seated himself on a stool by the kitchen island, cleared his throat. “Don’t make me get off this stool.” The tension remained, but the impending violence moved down a few notches. Seeming satisfied, Leo turned to her. “Coffee?” He addressed that to Arabella, holding out a cup he’d brewed from the machine on the counter. With a wary look at both Hayder and her brother, she went toward him but then almost scalded herself when Hayder barked, “Baby, where are your pants?” Oh yeah. She peeked down at her bare legs. To his credit, Leo didn’t, but he did smile. “How about I add some sugar and milk to this while you find some pants? You look like you need something sweet.” She couldn’t help but return his smile. “Yes, please.” Still ignoring the other two men, she stepped past them to the bedroom, where she scrounged in a drawer for pants. As she dressed, she listened to the arguing. “She’s leaving with me.” Her brother hadn’t relented. Neither did Hayder. “Wrong. Arabella isn’t going anywhere.” Ouch. She knew her brother wouldn’t like that. She was right. “Excuse me? You don’t get a say. She’s my sister, my responsibility. I’m taking her.” Arabella stepped back into the living room. “What of the danger though, Jeoff? The pack is in town, and they’re looking for me.” “We’ll figure something out.” “We already have. She’ll stay here with me where she’s safe.” Hayder crossed his arms over his impressive chest, looking much too determined— and sexy. A certain brother wasn’t impressed. “As safe as she was last night?” Hayder rolled his eyes. “Oh please. What part of ‘we had the situation under control’ can you not grasp? Leo, tell the wolf that Arabella was never in any danger.” “I don’t lie to my friends,” Leo said as he re-handed Arabella her coffee. She took a sip of the hot brew and sighed as she listened to the arguing. When Leo patted the stool beside him, she hopped on. For such a big man, he offered a strangely calming effect. On her at least. Hayder and Jeoff, on the other hand, just couldn’t stem their tirade. “I was wrong to stick her here. So you can forget I asked.” “Too late. She’s part of the pride now.” “She’s a wolf, or have you forgotten? She belongs with her own kind.” Jeoff crooked his finger at her and inclined his head to the door. Arabella didn’t move, more because Hayder’s next words froze her. “She belongs with me. Arabella is my mate.

But how to “take the side” of the oppressed without “taking sides” against the oppressors? How to oppose without denouncing? How to “be with” without “being against?” No neat answers are possible. But I have found help from Gandhi’s example of ahimsa and from the ongoing practice of mindfulness-meditation. Gandhi’s program for non-violence was, I believe, precisely what we are talking about: he stood firmly with the colonized people of India, but he never hated, or humiliated, or spoke ill of the British colonizers. Thus, he never broke off his connections with them. They knew he opposed them, but they did not feel he was against them. Indeed, they knew he respected and cared for them. Gandhi opposed, but he also embraced. To do that, one must be acting from a well-nurtured spiritual center. This is another reason why all our liberating action must arise out of our uniting contemplation – why, as Roshi Bernie Glassman told me, I’ll never stop the death squads unless I realize my oneness with them.

The inaction in response to Antifa certainly helped take the pressure off Biden, who never had to answer for the bricks flying through windows, rampant looting, toppling of statues, and assaults on innocent business owners that defined urban life throughout the summer of 2020. To do so would have been to confront an uncomfortable truth- the Democratic Party and its allies have been tolerating, encouraging, and mainstreaming political violence for decades.

I have often been asked,” Otto Frisch wrote many years afterward of the moment when he understood that a bomb might be possible after all, before he and Peierls carried the news to Mark Oliphant, “why I didn’t abandon the project there and then, saying nothing to anybody. Why start on a project which, if it was successful, would end with the production of a weapon of unparalleled violence, a weapon of mass destruction such as the world had never seen? The answer was very simple. We were at war, and the idea was reasonably obvious; very probably some German scientists had had the same idea and were working on it.”1280 Whatever scientists of one warring nation could conceive, the scientists of another warring nation might also conceive—and keep secret. That early in 1939 and early 1940, the nuclear arms race began. Responsible men who properly and understandably feared a dangerous enemy saw their own ideas reflected back to them malevolently distorted. Ideas that appeared defensive in friendly hands seen the other way around appeared aggressive. But they were the same ideas.

In short… the answer to every question was violence. And the faster you could get more violent than the other guy, the orcs, the better your chance of seeing the dusty dawn.

amazed at how cool and collected my mom could be under such pressure. ​I held my finger on the beam until I was pretty sure she was back to normal size. I released the trigger. The beam shut off. Mom stood there smiling. ​“Now that was certainly a different experience,” Mom gushed. “This ray has so much potential for good!” she beamed. ​“Ah, can’t it also be a weapon?” Zac asked. “I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to shrink their enemies down to tiny size?” ​“I certainly would,” Becky said. “Then I’d stomp on them!” she accented those words with a stomp. ​“Becky!” Mom scolded. “I’ve taught you that violence is never the answer!” ​Becky took a step backward. She lowered her head; “Fine, I wouldn’t squash them then. Just shrink them and laugh a lot. Laughter is good. Right, Mom?” ​Mom sighed. ​“Actually being giant would also be great!” Bobby shouted. “If you were a giant you could do whatever you wanted. Nobody could stop you.” He paused to think a bit, at least as much as Bobby probably ever thought. “Oh man, think of the fun I could have with farts and burps. I might be able to knock down mountains!” ​Mom took in Bobby and Becky’s words. Turning to Zac, she told him, “I see what you mean about it being used as a weapon.” ​“Well, Bobby

Estelle watched the travellers as they exited the train station, each moving with a grim swiftness that she had never seen before the war had started, because in the cheerful morning sunshine, the Gare du Nord was a terrifying place. It was a locale where the grey blight converged, a morass of Wehrmacht, SS, and Gestapo uniforms, all peppered with black spots of police. It was a place where tragedy and casual violence struck when one least expected it. To avoid attention, those who flowed around the occupiers were careful to keep their gaze on the ground, answered questions with single syllables only when necessary, and had their papers in a place from which they could be produced without delay. Only misfortune came from lingering in and around a Paris train station these days.

I have sometimes been asked at this point: What went on in the minds of those Americans, all highly educated men, that made it possible for them to betray their country? Did none of them suffer a crisis of conscience? The questions presupposes that whoever asks this has still failed to grasp that Communists mean exactly what they have been saying for a hundred years: they regard any government that is no Communist, including their own, merely as the political machine of a class whose power they have organized expressly to overthrow by all means, including violence. Therefore, ultimately the problem of espionage never presents itself to them as a problem of conscience, but as a problem of operations. Making due allowance for the differences of intelligence, energy, background and political development among individual men involved, and bearing in mind that two of them (White and Wadleigh) were not Communists, but fellow travelers, the answer to the questions must still be: no problem of conscience was then involved. For the Communists, the problem of conscience had been settled long before, at the moment when they accepted the program and discipline of the Communist Party. And of the fellow travelers who co-operate to the point of espionage, it must be observed that in effect they have become Communists, whatever fictive differences they may maintain. Faced with the opportunity of espionage, a Communist, though he may hesitate momentarily, will always, exactly to the degree that he is a Communist, engage in espionage. The act will not appear to him in terms of betrayal at all. It will, on the contrary, appear to him as a moral act, the more deserving the more it involves him in personal risk, committed in the name of a faith (Communism) on which, he believes, hinges the hope and future of mankind, and against a system (capitalism) which he believes to be historically bankrupt. At that point, conscience to the Communist, and conscience to the non-Communist mean two things as opposed as the two sides of a battlefield. The failure to understand that fact is part of the total failure of the West to grasp the nature of its enemy, what he wants, what he means to do and how he will go about doing it. It is part of the failure of the West to understand that it is at grips with an enemy having no moral viewpoint in common with itself, that two irreconcilable moralities, proceeding from two irreconcilable readings of man's fate and future are involved, and hence, their conflict is irrepressible. The question of conscience can arise only when, for one reason or another, a Communist questions his faith, as I was about to do, or as later on, in different ways Wadleigh and Keith would do. Then it rises terribly indeed.

Did I develop my own set of random assumptions by utilizing the very little information available to me? For example, Leo Vodnik had held a magazine titled Construction Engineering Australia. Men are ten times more likely than women to die at work. Is that all it took for me to predict a “workplace accident” as his cause of death? Ethan Chang had his arm in a cast. Was it his injury that made me choose “assault,” together with the fact that injury and violence is a leading cause of death for young adult men? I know I watched Kayla Halfpenny at the airport and saw her knock over her drink and then her phone. Was it my observation of the sweet girl’s clumsiness together with the fact that road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death among young adults that led me to say “car accident”? Did I simply make random choices? Is that what led me to pancreatic cancer, the most feared cancer, for the vibrant woman who reminded me of my friend Jill, and breast cancer for the pregnant woman? Did I temporarily believe I was Madame Mae? I must have been thinking of my mother, because I kept saying “fate won’t be fought.” Had I somehow become a strange alchemy of the two of us? Both of us, after all, specialized in predictions. There are certain events in my life that I believe may have had a profound effect on me. For example: the little boy who drowned at the blowhole when I was a child. I have never forgotten the sound of his mother screaming. That boy had brown eyes and dark hair. When I saw that dear little brown-eyed, dark-haired baby, did I think of that poor boy and therefore predict the baby would drown at the same age? Did I look at the young bride, Eve, and remember the charming woman who came to my mother for readings, who was so excited about her forthcoming wedding, the first wedding I ever attended? Did I think of the time I saw her at the shops, her inner light snuffed out, and remember how she died in a fire believed to have been lit by her husband? Why did I choose self-harm for Allegra, the beautiful flight attendant? Was it simply that I saw repressed pain in her eyes from the back injury I now know she suffered on that flight? Was it because I knew the rate of suicide in young females has been steadily increasing over recent years? Was I thinking of death as I boarded the plane and contemplating the fact that everyone on that plane would one day die, and wondering what their causes of death would ultimately be? Well. That’s the only one of my questions I can answer with certainty. Of course I was thinking of death. I had my husband’s ashes in my carry-on bag. I was missing my two best friends. I was thinking of every person I had ever lost throughout my life.

Pops says violence is never the answer,” Bubba quoted again, but his eyes were full of mischief this time. “But Theodore Roosevelt said ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ And he was the president, so…” He shrugged as if that explained everything.

There are those who can take up their grief and bear it, strong natures who feel their own powers through the very heaviness of their burden. Weaker people give themselves up to their sorrow passively, as they would submit to a sickness; and like a sickness their sorrow pervades them, drinks itself into their innermost being and becomes a part of them, is assimilated in them through a slow struggle, and finally loses itself in them, as they return to perfect health. But there are yet others to whom sorrow is a violence done them, a cruelty which they never learn to accept as a trial or chastisement or as simple fate. It is to them an act of tyranny, an expression of personal hate, and it always leaves a sting in their hearts. Children do not often grieve in this way, but Niels Lyhne did. For had he not been face to face with God in the fervor of his prayers? Had he not crawled on his knees to the foot of the throne, full of hope, tremulous with fear, and yet firm in his faith in the omnipotence of prayer, with courage to plead until he should be heard? And he had been forced to rise from the dust and go away with his hope put to shame. His faith had not been able to bring the miracle down from heaven, no God had answered his cry, death had marched straight on and seized its prey, as if no sheltering wall of prayers had been lifted toward the sky.

My favourite quotes, Part Two -- from Michael Connelly's "Harry Bosch" series The Black Box On Bosch’s first call to Henrik, the twin brother of Anneke - Henrik: "I am happy to talk now. Please, go ahead.” “Thank you. I, uh, first want to say as I said in my email that the investigation of your sister’s death is high priority. I am actively working on it. Though it was twenty years ago, I’m sure your sister’s death is something that hurts till this day. I’m sorry for your loss.” “Thank you, Detective. She was very beautiful and very excited about things. I miss her very much.” “I’m sure you do.” Over the years, Bosch had talked to many people who had lost loved ones to violence. There were too many to count but it never got any easier and his empathy never withered. The Burning Room 2 Grace was a young saxophonist with a powerful sound. She also sang. The song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and she produced a sound from the horn that no human voice could ever touch. It was plaintive and sad but it came with an undeniable wave of underlying hope. It made Bosch think that there was still a chance for him, that he could still find whatever it was he was looking for, no matter how short his time was. ---------------- He grabbed his briefcase off his chair and walked toward the exit door. Before he got there, he heard someone clapping behind him. He turned back and saw it was Soto, standing by her desk. Soon Tim Marcia rose up from his cubicle and started to clap. Then Mitzi Roberts did the same and then the other detectives. Bosch put his back against the door, ready to push through. He nodded his thanks and held his fist up at chest level and shook it. He then went through the door and was gone. The Burning Room 3 “What do you want to know, Bosch?” Harry nodded. His instinct was right. The good ones all had that hollow space inside. The empty place where the fire always burns. For something. Call it justice. Call it the need to know. Call it the need to believe that those who are evil will not remain hidden in darkness forever. At the end of the day Rodriguez was a good cop and he wanted what Bosch wanted. He could not remain angry and mute if it might cost Orlando Merced his due. ------------ “I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away.” “What is the other, Henrik?” Though he knew the answer. “Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch.” Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for. “So am I, Henrik,” he said. “So am I.” Angle of Investigation 1972 They were heading south on Vermont through territory unfamiliar to him. It was only his second day with Eckersly and his second on the job. Now He knew that passion was a key element in any investigation. Passion was the fuel that kept his fire burning. So he purposely sought the personal connection or, short of that, the personal outrage in every case. It kept him locked in and focused. But it wasn’t the Laura syndrome. It wasn’t the same as falling in love with a dead woman. By no means was Bosch in love with June Wilkins. He was in love with the idea of reaching back across time and catching the man who had killed her. The Scarecrow At one time the newsroom was the best place in the world to work. A bustling place of camaraderie, competition, gossip, cynical wit and humor, it was at the crossroads of ideas and debate. It produced stories and pages that were vibrant and intelligent, that set the agenda for what was discussed and considered important in a city as diverse and exciting as Los Angeles.

Your Excellency," [Chief Wimbe] said, turning to face the president. "I'd like to congratulate you not only for what you've done in Malawi, but all across the great continent of Africa. We're having about all the things you're doing in Congo and how you'd had success. We're very proud of our president. But please understand, we're also at war here in Malawi, and that war is against hunger." He then asked the president to stop funding wells and toilets and use the money to buy grain. (Because really, how can you use the toilet if you never eat?) [...] Shortly after, when the president got up to talk, several well-dressed officials approached Gilbert's father and asked to speak with him. Knowing the president's habit of giving handouts, the chief became excited. They're giving us money. My speech must've worked. About six men led the chief behind a building near the stage, and once there, they confronted him. "In what capacity were you speaking such nonsense?" one asked, looking very angry. Before Chief Wimbe could answer, they knocked him to the ground and began beating him with clubs and batons.

- I didn't seduce her! OK, I didn't know exactly what I was doing. It seemed like fun and then... well, THAT happened. - said Ronnie. - It wasn't intentional. I did it for shits and giggles, alright? We never had sex. She was mortified at the thought of losing her job, but I told her that I wouldn't tell anyone. - Well... you just did. - said Tyler. - You two aren't just "anyone". That's the difference. - said Ronnie and resumed his task... until his ears caught a disturbing row of cries for help. - What kind of language is that? - Tyler asked. - It's... Hindi. Urdu, to be specific. - Ronnie answered. - How the fuck do you know? - Tyler asked. - Just found it out. - answered Ronnie. - Well, where does that lead us? - asked Tyler once again. - Pakistan. - said Garret. - We're not going there saving Muslims from the clutches of radical Islam and fighting for human rights, are we? - said Tyler. - No, obviously. But if their lives are in danger, we'll help. Not because some non-governmental organisation is obsessed with political correctness and equal rights, but because they don't deserve to die just because some delusional maniac decided to play God with their fate. - said Ronnie.

Violence is never ever the answer. Self defense is the last resort exception.

a group of people decided to steal from him. They broke down his doors, ruined his garden, and made an attempt to steal the people he was teaching. And do you know what happened?” Sylver almost sighed the words out. “He turned the other cheek, and they saw the error of their ways, and everything worked out all right. Violence is never the answer, never be cruel, and so on and so forth.” “He tore them limb from bloody limb and spent a month hunting them down like a wild animal.

Always expect the unexpected. Never get too when things are going well, because otherwise the fall will be a lot harder. dinosaurs: triceratops and stegosaurus. Weather forecasters are like prison visitors. Nice people but usually misguided. The answer was yes, no, and maybe all rolled in one. She added that she hoped she might see him again. Not if I catch sight of you first, he thought. But like anything in life, you can never quite tell. People you know always have the ability to shock you. The label said it was "just like the mama used to cook" but if that was the case mama had obviously long since been banned from the kitchen. He wasn't work-shy. He was work-allergic. The problem these days is that gangsters, whether they be small time drug dealers with guns and attitude or wannabe urban godfathers like Nicholas Tyndall, have no qualms about using serious violence and the treat of it to get what they want, because they know that neither the judicial system nor the police service have the wherewithal or the powers to protect those who speak out against them. English prisons are roughly on a par with English traffic, English weather and English hospitals. In other words, fucking terrible. The striation marks on a bullet are the microscopic scratches caused by imperfections on the surface of the interior of a gun's barrel that are unique to each individual firearm, and act as its calling card.The same striation marks will appear on a bullet every time a particular gun is fired. 'The last time I spent quality time with you was Heathrow last week and five people ended up shot' The thing with me is that I am pessimist who's constantly trying to be optimistic, but can't quite manage it. Experience gained through years of policework doesn't allow for that sort of naivety. They say its a grand life if you don't weaken and for so long I've tried to live my life like that, but at that moment in time, weakness felt so tempting that I almost open my arms to greet it. 'And the whole time I couldn't wait to leave. And you know what, thy were the best years of my life.

But Thanatos sniffed toward Bryce, almost as canine as the hounds in the shadows, and said, “Your starlight smells… fresher.” The hunger lacing the male’s words stilled Hunt’s chaotic mind—honing him into a weapon primed for violence. He didn’t give a shit if he never got answers about his parentage. If that asshole made one move against Bryce, ghostly forms or no— Bryce said nonchalantly, “New deodorant.

Glenn’s right,” said Cheekbones. “If we’re going to fight off Salmon Brigade, we need to cooperate.” “No!” cried Rex. “Cooperation never solves anything. Violence, that’s the answer!

faith and belief are the practices of committing a life in the face of no answers. God is and always will be outside of human comprehension. And loving Her is an act; it’s not stubbornly repeating creeds and trying to force Her into modern expectations or rational paradigms. She’ll never fit in the same boxes we apply to science and reason; She’s not meant to. And to try to force it only breeds spiritual violence in the end.

Perhaps she was right. Violence is never the answer, of course. Until it’s the only option.

Why, after decades of internal violence and foreign aggression, did the world’s first Socialist society implode without even trying to defend itself? One answer, of course, is that it never really existed in the first place: that, in the words of the historian Martin Malia, ‘there is no such thing as socialism, and the Soviet Union built

Violence is never the answer. Which is why I feel an ounce of shame when my open palm connects to his cheek.

Do your words mean what you think, Minos?”she asked with uncertainty. “I am the sovereign. And you, Ariadne, are the embodiment of the power which moves the world. Are we capable of deceiving one another? We would soon pay the ultimate penalty if we were. Maybe I have managed to convince you. I do not know. But one thing must be made clear. You must realize that this island, its fate, and its future are just as dear to me as they are to you. Vidvoyos has often spoken wisely, and many of his ideas shall be put into force. Law and order are what we want, for too much violence and the dethronement of kings lead to destruction and all too often embolden the enemy. We could breathe new life into the effeminate heart of the kingdom by strengthening the authority of its monarch. And only you can help in this, despite the generally declining faith in the gods. Both you and the double-headed axe of our forefathers are symbols capable of unifying the people, for everyone still trusts in your miraculous powers, and even the courtiers who hold everything in derision would never dare turn against you. Maybe they realize that everything would crumble to nothing without your presence. Assist me, Ariadne. Who is Vidvoyos—or anyone for that matter—compared to the sacred destiny of Crete? He must depart at once or perish! Otherwise, the entire nation will be consumed by civil war from which it may never recover. That is all.”Silence fell, and for some time, they did not speak. ‘‘Vidvoyos does not believe in the gods...”she said softly as though answering a question of her own. “I have always resented that. Maybe they are not as we imagine them to be, but still, they do exist and must be served and honored. What would we be without them? Indeed, would we be anything at all? Anyone who ignores the gods must find support within his own self. But there are times in life when this kind of support is not enough. Perilavos is such a feeble, capricious child... And upon many occasions have I wondered whether he would be capable of becoming king and of guiding such a powerful nation.”Minos lowered his head in thought. Presently he looked up. ‘‘I would like you to appear in Amnissos on the day they depart so that you may step upon the altar of stone and make prophecies about their distant journey. For there is nothing to prevent you from wishing Vidvoyos a safe return and bidding him a kingly farewell.

do it? Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are, too? We all know the answer to these very simple questions. When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can’t walk away from this truth. And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing, and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once. This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile, and most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong. Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division, and yes, with violence. To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong. And in the second decade of the twenty-first century, asking African Americans—or anyone else—to drive by property that they own occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd. Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place. Here is the essential truth: We are better together than we are apart. Indivisibility is our essence. Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world? We radiate

Did you ever tell your previous employer any of your thoughts on ways they could improve?” If he says “Yes, but they never listened to anyone,” or “Yeah, but they just said ‘Mind your own business,’” this may tell more about the style of his approach than about managers at his last job. Most employers react well to suggestions that are offered in a constructive way, regardless of whether or not they follow them. Another unfavorable response is, “What’s the use of making suggestions? Nothing ever changes anyway.” Some applicants will accuse former employers of stealing their ideas. Others will tell war stories about efforts to get a former employer to follow suggestions. If so, ask if this was a one-man undertaking or in concert with his coworkers. Sometimes an applicant will say his co-workers “didn’t have the guts to confront management like I did.” “What are some of the things your last employer could have done to keep you?” Some applicants will give a reasonable answer (slightly more pay, better schedule, etc.), but others will provide a list of demands that demonstrate unreasonable expectations (e.g., “They could have doubled my salary, promoted me to vice president, and given me Fridays off”). “How do you go about solving problems at work?” Good answers are that he consults with others, weighs all points of view, discusses them with involved parties, etc. Unfavorable answers contain a theme of confrontation (e.g., “I tell the source of the problem he’d better straighten up,” or “I go right to the man in charge and lay it on the line”). Another bad answer is that he does nothing to resolve problems, saying, “Nothing ever changes anyway.” “Describe a problem you had in your life where someone else’s help was very important to you.” Is he able to recall such a situation? If so, does he give credit or express appreciation about the help? “Who is your best friend and how would you describe your friendship?” Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who cannot come up with a single name in response to this question. If they give a name that was not listed as a reference, ask why. Then ask if you can call that friend as a reference.

I truly believe that violence is almost never the answer. But when it is, it is the only answer, and we all need to be prepared for it.

America’s history has been defined by its violence, the question of how to respond to it largely answered by law enforcement obtaining bigger and better weapons to counter the ones held by criminals. We’ve taken war weapons to the streets and homes of civilians with no idea what harm these weapons can do, or that escalation is never a solution.

Sorry about hitting your brother” I finally say as I sit down next to Jase sighing. “Why’d you do that anyway?” I give her the only answer I’ve got. “I could see the way he was looking at her; you can’t tell me he doesn’t want to be all over Eden. And she was leaving with him, I just…” I trail off not knowing how to finish my sentence. Aubree seems to pick up on it “You’re right, Zee has always looked at Eden like that. But Eden’s completely unaware of her own worth

An affective death spiral can nucleate around supernatural beliefs; especially monotheisms whose pinnacle is a Super Happy Agent, defined primarily by agreeing with any nice statement about it; especially meme complexes grown sophisticated enough to assert supernatural punishments for disbelief. But the death spiral can also start around a political innovation, a charismatic leader, belief in racial destiny, or an economic hypothesis. The lesson of history is that affective death spirals are dangerous whether or not they happen to involve supernaturalism. Religion isn’t special enough, as a class of mistake, to be the key problem. Sam Harris came closer when he put the accusing finger on faith. If you don’t place an appropriate burden of proof on each and every additional nice claim, the affective resonance gets started very easily. Look at the poor New Agers. Christianity developed defenses against criticism, arguing for the wonders of faith; New Agers culturally inherit the cached thought that faith is positive, but lack Christianity’s exclusionary scripture to keep out competing memes. New Agers end up in happy death spirals around stars, trees, magnets, diets, spells, unicorns . . . But the affective death spiral turns much deadlier after criticism becomes a sin, or a gaffe, or a crime. There are things in this world that are worth praising greatly, and you can’t flatly say that praise beyond a certain point is forbidden. But there is never an Idea so true that it’s wrong to criticize any argument that supports it. Never. Never ever never for ever. That is flat. The vast majority of possible beliefs in a nontrivial answer space are false, and likewise, the vast majority of possible supporting arguments for a true belief are also false, and not even the happiest idea can change that. And it is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.

As global conditions seem increasingly incomprehensible, we can humbly recall these words of Anaïs Nin: “We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.” Therefore, the greater the number of we ares that we see, the more likely a compassionate response to an often unfathomable life becomes possible. If we only understand life through our own particular lives, we will never feel the breadth of life in general and will always be deluded in our pursuit of true awakening. It is only by practicing in a multiplicity of communities — including ones that might seem in existential opposition — that we will have the opportunity to sense that which connects us all as a Universal Family. From this place, we can extend collective effort with our minds and hearts in fellowship together. Cultivating our hearts and minds, we must pay the broadest attention possible to love fully together all aspects of our diverse lives. This inner sense of community between mind and heart is indispensable in creating the outer sense of community and wholeness that benefits all of our experiences. We turn our hearts and minds together toward the lives around us. Who are we beyond who we think we are? Our mind-heartfulness is an invitation to journey into the answers that lie beyond the question. When we come to a common sense of the heart and mind together — in common with every spiritual tradition, not to mention every human being — instead of eating each other alive with violence, succumbing to greed, hatred, and delusion, we might start to feed each other with care, in order to awaken our hearts and minds together

The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy's arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy's arrangements. But if you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slanging or silence.

name, but he lives around the corner.’ Mary sighed. ‘He works in a law firm — or a finance brokerage — or something like that—’ she lifted her left hand and moved her wrist in circles ‘—on the next street over. Of course, when you walk past a shelter wearing a Rolex you’re going to be asked if you can spare some change.’ She shook her head. ‘But yes, I know who you mean, and I’ve heard him say those things.’ ‘He mean anything by them you think?’ She studied Roper for a second. ‘Are you asking if I think he could have murdered Ollie?’ Roper stayed quiet. He couldn’t lead her into anything. After a second, he said, ‘I’m not asking anything other than whether you think that he’s worth speaking to.’ Diplomatic he wasn’t. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to him — only heard his voice, had him described to me.’ Jamie cut in now. ‘Has he ever assaulted any of the people who come here? Any violence, or direct threat?’ ‘Direct threat?’ Roper sucked his teeth. ‘As in, I’m going to drown you versus you should be drowned.’ Mary’s mouth crumped into a wrinkled line. ‘I don’t know that I can really say whether… I… I don’t know is the simple answer. Lots of people take offence to the shelter being here. It wouldn’t be out of the question for someone to act rashly — but him? I don’t know.’ She was being careful not to say anything that would incriminate the possibly innocent man. She turned to Roper, trying to sound casual. There was no need to worry Mary. ‘We’ll get some uniformed officers to canvas the area — ask around to see whether the shelter has had an impact on anyone in particular.’ She smiled at Mary now. ‘But don’t worry, it’s just eliminating the most improbable suspects first, narrowing down the scope of the investigation, you know?’ ‘Am I a suspect?’ Mary asked, stopping

I think Mikhail is very lucky to have found you. You’re strong yourself, just as he is.” “I’m putting up a great front, then”--Raven wiped at her eyes with her knuckles--“because I feel like I’m breaking apart inside. And I’m not very happy with Mikhail.” “Nor do I think you should be, yet your first instinct is to protect him. You were horrified by the idea that he might be suffering as you are.” “I don’t like to see anyone in pain. There’s something sad about Mikhail, as if he’s borne the weight of the world on his shoulders for far too long. Sometimes I look at his face and there’s such sorrow there--not in his eyes exactly, but etched into his face.” Raven sighed. “I guess I’m not making any sense, but he needs someone to take the shadows away.” “That’s an interesting assessment, child, and I must say, I know what you mean. I’ve seen the very same thing in him. Taking his shadows away.” He repeated the words, aloud, musing over them. “That’s it exactly.” Raven nodded. “Like he’s seen too much violence, too many terrible things, and it’s pulled him deeper and deeper into darkness. When I’m close to him I can feel that. He stands like a guardian in front of some evil, malevolent gate and holds monsters at bay so the rest of us can go about our lives and never know we were even threatened.” Father Hummer’s breath caught in his throat. “Is that how you see him? A guardian of the gate?” Raven nodded. “It’s an image very vivid in my mind. I know it probably sounds melodramatic to you.” “I wish I could have said those very words to him myself,” the priest said softly. “Many times he has come here seeking comfort, yet I never knew exactly what to say. I prayed God would send help to him to find his answer, Raven, and perhaps he sent you.” She was trembling, constantly fighting the torment in her head, the need to touch Mikhail, the idea that he might be gone from Earth. Raven took a deep, calming breath, grateful for the priest. “I don’t think I’m God’s answer to anything, Father. Right now I want to curl up into a little ball and cry.” “You can be strong, Raven. You know he lives.

I need you to do as I ask you,” he said in desperation, fighting the beast lifting its head hungrily. Her laughter was soft, enticing, the sound dancing over his skin. “No, you don’t. Too many people think your word is law. You need someone to defy you a little bit. I know you won’t hurt me, Mikhail. I can feel your fear of yourself. You think there’s something in you I can’t love, some kind of monster you’re afraid for me to see. I know you better than you know yourself.” “You are so reckless, Raven, so heedless of danger.” He gripped the back of a chair so hard the wood threatened to disintegrate into dust. As it was, it would hold the imprint of his fingers for all time. “Danger, Mikhail?” She tipped her head to one side, her hair falling in a slide over one shoulder. Her hands went to the top button of her blouse. “I would never be in danger from you, even if you were furious with me. The only danger right now is to my clothes.” She took a step back, laughing again, letting the sound warm him, ignite the fuse deep inside him. Heat coiled, spread; need slammed into him, hard and urgent. Hunger tore at him, a blind red haze. “You, little one, are playing with fire, and I am totally out of control.” He made one last attempt to save her. Why couldn’t she see how selfish he really was? How he had taken over her life and would never release her? He was the monster she couldn’t see. Perhaps with the rest of the world cold logic and justice ruled him, but not with her. With Raven he was taken over by emotions with which he was so unfamiliar that he could not control them. He did things he felt were unconscionable. He let her see the violence in his mind, tearing her clothes, taking her body without thought or control. She answered him in her mind, warmth, love, her body eager for his, receptive, accepting of his violent side. She had total trust and faith in his feelings for her, in his commitment to her. He swore softly, ripping the clothes from his fettered body, leaping upon her like an attacking jungle cat. “Mikhail, I love this dress,” she whispered against his throat, laughter still spilling into his mind. Laughter. Joy. No fear. “Get out of the damned thing,” he said hoarsely, not realizing he was confirming her belief in him. She took her time, teasing him by fumbling at buttons, making him find the hook in her skirt. “You do not know what you are doing,” he objected raggedly, but his hands were gentle on her body, carefully stripping away her clothes until she was all bare satin skin and long silky hair.

We will never reay know the answer until we're living in utopia where being born with a vagina doesn't mark you out as an inferior being with an inexplicable liking for pink, and being born with a pens doesn't magically infuse you with the leader gene, a penchant for violence and an inability to iron.

So why do so few of us have a plan for unexpected violence? For some reason, we see training for self-defense as a Herculean effort reserved for the physically elite, so we dismiss it. That means there are just two main groups who study and prepare for violence. One group is the predators (we’ll talk more about them later). The other group is the professional protectors, like the police and military. Many people are content to bank on those protectors to be there in times of need. But pinning all your hopes on the possibility that one of those professionals will be on the very spot at the very moment you’re in danger is a lot like throwing out your fire extinguisher in the hopes that a fire truck will be turning the corner onto your block the very moment the flames touch the drapes. I don’t want to live like that, and this book is for those who don’t want to live like that, either. Obviously, I hope violence never visits you. But we don’t always control whether we experience violence. That’s never entirely up to us, because violence is an equal opportunity offender. It cuts across all demographic lines—race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socioeconomic status. There is no amount of privilege or social standing that can make you immune to, or allow you to opt out of, violence when someone has identified you as their target. The choice you do have is whether you’re going to be ready for it. I believe that the wisest thing we can do is ready ourselves for the kind of moment we hope never happens. The solution to fear is

If a laissez-faire society is attainable, why haven’t men established one before now? The answer is that essentially good people have prevented it by their unwitting support of slavery. The majority of people throughout history have accepted the idea that it was both proper and necessary for some men to coercively rule over others. Most of these people weren’t basically bad, and probably only a few of them have had a lust for power. But they have held a terribly wrong idea which has caused them to support a social system that institutionalizes slavery and violence. It is this idea—that it is proper and/or necessary for some men to coercively govern others, which is the idea of government—that has prevented the establishment of a laissez-faire society and which has been responsible for incalculable human suffering and waste in the form of political and religious persecutions, taxes, regulations, conscription, slavery, wars, despotisms, etc., etc. To achieve a laissez-faire society, it is only necessary to enable enough people to change this idea in their minds. All that is required for the defeat of evil is that good men stop their unwitting support of it. There is a great and growing conflict in our world between those who want to be free and those who want to rule (together with those who want to be ruled). This great conflict has been taking shape for centuries, but the vast majority of people have never understood what it was all about because they haven’t seen that the issue was freedom versus slavery. Because they have believed that men must be governed, most people have been, however, unwittingly and apathetically on the side of slavery. Until recently, no more than a tiny handful of individualsts have realized what freedom means and how necessary it is for man’s happiness and well-being. The great conflict between freedom and slavery, though it has taken many forms, finds its main expression in a conflict between two powerful and opposing human institutions—the free market and government. The establishment of a laissez-faire society depends on the outcome of the war between these two institutions—a war whose most crucial battles are fought on the field of ideas.

Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person's face that anything changes

She frowned at him and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You’re pretty damned stubborn, aren’t you?” He thought that was evident and not worth answering, so he just let himself disappear into her eyes. She had beautiful eyes. He loved how liquid and soft they were. She started to move away and he caught her arm. “Don’t go.” “I don’t like people touching me.” He should have let go of her, but instead he rubbed the pads of his fingers up and down her bare arm. Her shirt was still half buttoned, and he was tempted to stroke her flat belly just to know the texture of her. “I don’t like it either,” he said. And it was true. Funny. He’d never admitted that to anyone. It didn’t particularly matter, he did what had to be done, but he didn’t like it— maybe not in the same way she meant. His was a matter of personal space, a natural avoidance of closeness with others. But Rikki . . . He studied her face. “I don’t think my touch bothers you that much.” She blinked. She rarely blinked, but he’d struck home. She compressed her lips and then narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re pretty arrogant for a man who can’t move with a pile of weapons sitting next to him.” “You have such a penchant for violence.” She looked outraged. “I do? You’re the one being hostile. I’m Mother Teresa here. And I don’t like sick people.” “Do you like anyone?” Amusement was creeping in again. He was beginning to like the feeling. “Anything?” “Not particularly.

Violence is never the answer.

Why? Why did India so easily forgive Rajiv for violence that, as prime minister, he was directly responsible for? Why have other leaders, like Narendra Modi, never been forgiven for presiding over similar massacres? I have asked myself this question many times and the only answer I have been able to find is that it was perhaps because Rajiv, for a brief shining moment in Indian history, became for most Indians a living symbol of hope.

Sean, faith and belief are the practices of committing a life in the face of no answers. God is and always will be outside of human comprehension. And loving Her is an act; it’s not stubbornly repeating creeds and trying to force Her into modern expectations or rational paradigms. She’ll never fit in the same boxes we apply to science and reason; She’s not meant to. And to try to force it only breeds spiritual violence in the end.

There is no surer path to violence, hatred, and despair than ignorance. And yet, perhaps, there is a beauty in the unknown. There is something to be said for not having all the answers. There is something to be said for the humble acknowledgment that although the pursuit of knowledge is pure and should never be abandoned, some things may simply be beyond our comprehension.

It wasn't as though we didn't know how overwhelmingly the army outnumbered us. But the strange thing was, it didn't matter. Ever since the uprising began, I'd felt something coursing through me, as overwhelming as any army. Conscience. Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world. The day I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of my fellow civilians, staring down the barrels of the soldiers' guns, the day the bodies of those first two slaughtered were placed in a handcart and pushed at the head of the column, I was startled to discover an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean ... the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it.” (p. 120-121) “Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person. Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered - is this the essential fate of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable? I once met someone who was a paratrooper during the Busan uprising. He told me his story after hearing my own. He said that they'd been ordered to suppress the civilians with as much violence as possible, and those who committed especially brutal actions were awarded hundreds of thousands of won by their superiors. One of his company had said, 'What's the problem? They give you money and tell you to beat someone up, then why wouldn't you?' I heard a story about one of the Korean army platoons that fought in Vietnam. How they forced the women, children and elderly of one particular village into the main hall, and then burned it to the ground. Some of those who came to slaughter us did so with the memory of those previous times, when committing such actions in wartime had won them a handsome reward. It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanjing, in Bosnia and all across the American continent when it was still known as the New World, with such a uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code. I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race. And that includes you, professor, listening to this testimony. As it includes myself. Every day I examine the scar on my hand. This place where the bone was once exposed, where a milky discharge seeped from a festering wound. Every time I come across an ordinary Monami biro, the breath catches in my throat. I wait for time to wash me away like muddy water. I wait for death to come and wash me clean, to release me from the memory of those other, squalid deaths, which haunt my days and nights. I'm fighting, alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact. So tell me, professor, what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.” (p. 140-142)