Voluntary Related Quotes

The aim is not therefore to liberate some 'essential self' by throwing off the burden of government and the State, but to develop the self in creative and voluntary relations with others.

To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relationg to everything He has made, but He has no Necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can dring to Him who is complete in himself.

...his condition in Roanoke is a strong testament that lassitude, indifference and the peculiarities of his thought were primarily the consequences of his illness and not of the early attempts to treat it. The popular view that anti-psychotics were chemical straight jackets that suppressed clear thinking and voluntary activity seems not to be borne out in Nash's case. If anything, the only periods when he was relatively free of hallucinations, delusions and the erosion of will were the periods following either insulin treatment or the use of anti psychotics. In other words, rather than reducing Nash to a zombie, medication seemed to reduce zombie like behavior.

Ungratified sexuality is readily transformed into rage. "Prison explosions" are outbreaks of sadism resulting from the absence of sexual gratification. Hence, when 33,000 workers leave their employment site all at once precisely in spring, there can be no doubt that the unsatisfying sex-economic conditions in the Soviet Union are the cause. By "sex-economic conditions" we mean more than just the possibility of a regulated and satisfying love life; over and above this we mean everything that is related to pleasure and the joy of life in one's work.

We are dealing with a genuine Stockholm syndrome on a mass scale - when the hostage becomes the accomplice of the hostage taker - as well as a revolution of the concept of voluntary servitude and master-slave relations. When the entire society becomes an accomplice to those who took it hostage, but just as much when individuals split into, for themselves, hostage and hostage taker.

If everyone were invariably honest, able, wise, and kind, there should be no occasion for government. Everyone would readily understand what is desirable and what is possible in given circumstances, all would concur upon the best means toward their purpose and for equitable participation in the ensuing benefits, and would act without compulsion or default. The maximum production was certainly obtained from such voluntary action arising from personal initiative. But since human beings will sometimes lie, shirk, break promises, fail to improve their faculties, act imprudently, seize by violence the goods of others, and even kill one another in anger or greed, government might be defined as the police organization. In that case, it must be described as a necessary evil. It would have no existence as a separate entity, and no intrinsic authority; it could not be justly empowered to act excepting as individuals infringed one another's rights, when it should enforce prescribed penalties. Generally, it would stand in the relation of a witness to contract, holding a forfeit for the parties. As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.

James Madison wrote, “each state … is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation then the new Constitution will … be a. federal and not a national constitution.

Like any other subordinate of the hell, I've died a few times. Knife wound, explosions, minotaur-related disagreements, voluntary and incredibly athletic decisions to stop my own heart. The usual. But I've never been chewed up and digested by a dragon god. Which, I guess, is a class of experience above being eaten by a garden-variety lizard.

If the secret core of potlatch is the reciprocity of exchange, why is this reciprocity not asserted directly, why does it assume the “mystified” form of two consecutive acts each of which is staged as a free voluntary display of generosity? Here we encounter the paradoxes of forced choice, of freedom to do what is necessary, at its most elementary: I have to do freely what I am expected to do. (If, upon receiving a gift, I immediately return it to the giver, this direct circulation would amount to an extremely aggressive gesture of humiliation, it would signal that I refused the other’s gifts — recall those embarrassing moments when elderly people forget and give us last year’s present once again … ) …the reciprocity of exchange is in itself thoroughly ambiguous; at its most fundamental, it is destructive of the social bond, it is the logic of revenge, tit for tat. To cover this aspect of exchange, to make it benevolent and pacific, one has to pretend that each person’s gift is free and stands on its own. This brings us to potlatch as the “pre-economy of the economy,” its zero-level, that is, exchange as the reciprocal relation of two non-productive expenditures. If the gift belongs to Master and exchange to the Servant, potlatch is the paradoxical exchange between Masters. Potlach is simultaneously the zero-level of civility, the paradoxical point at which restrained civility and obscene consumption overlap, the point at which it is polite to behave impolitely.

We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision, and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if decision itself were voluntary, every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide–an infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide. We are free to decide because decision “happens.” We just decide without having the faintest understanding of how we do it. In fact, it is neither voluntary nor involuntary. To “get the feel” of this relativity is to find another extraordinary transformation of our experience as a whole, which may be described in either of two ways. I feel that I am deciding everything that happens, or, I feel that everything, including my decisions, is just happening spontaneously. For a decision–the freest of my actions-just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me. Such a way of seeing things is vividly described by a modern Zen master, the late Sokei-an Sasaki: One day I wiped out all the notions from my mind. I gave up all desire. I discarded all the words with which I thought and stayed in quietude. I felt a little queer–as if I were being carried into something, or as if I were touching some power unknown to me … and Ztt! I entered. I lost the boundary of my physical body. I had my skin, of course, but I felt I was standing in the center of the cosmos. I spoke, but my words had lost their meaning. I saw people coming towards me, but all were the same man. All were myself! I had never known this world. I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion: I was never created; I was the cosmos; no individual Mr. Sasaki existed.7 It would seem, then, that to get rid of the subjective distinction between “me” and “my experience”–through seeing that my idea of myself is not myself–is to discover the actual relationship between myself and the “outside” world. The individual, on the one hand, and the world, on the other, are simply the abstract limits or terms of a concrete reality which is “between” them, as the concrete coin is “between” the abstract, Euclidean surfaces of its two sides. Similarly, the reality of all “inseparable opposites”–life and death, good and evil, pleasure and pain, gain and loss–is that “between” for which we have no words.

The fading of a memory or the losing of its affect depends on various factors. The most important of these is whether there has been an energetic reaction to the event that provokes the affect. By ‘reaction’ we here understand the whole class of voluntary and involuntary reflexes - from tears to acts of revenge - in which, as experience shows us, the affects are discharged. If this reaction takes place to a sufficient amount a large part of the affect disappears as a result.

We live in a world that has a cognitive bias and assumes that our actions are voluntary. We are confronted with questions related to motivation and outcome. We are asked about costs, risks, and benefits. However, state shifts in the neural regulation of the autonomic nervous system are usually not voluntary, although the state shifts have profound impact on behavior. The state shifts occur in a more reflexive manner when we are confronted by specific cues in the environment.

The Living Word has various dimensions in relation to power and will to power. The spoken word stands at the very bottom of the involuted scale, being the faint echo of the inaudible Word. All beings, from the Gods to mankind, possess a sound, an essential name, a key note. By discovering what it is, one acquires the power to decompose and recreate it. It is also a mantra of voluntary death and resurrection. In the current parlance: the individual, chromosomic, genetic code has been deciphered. The secret has been penetrated. The name to which we refer corresponds to the supratemporal being and has nothing to do with the intimate, family name, although sometimes a delicate synchronicity is produced within a turn of the wheel, a mysterious lucky occurrence filled with meaning, and this name may also be symbolic. 'You must discover your Beloved's real name if you are to bring her back to life. And yours, too. They are the names of the God and Goddess to whom they will give a face. 'Of the God within you', as the Hindu greeting says: Namaste. 'I greet the God within you'. 'The essential name cannot be chosen, it isn't arbitrary. It is filled with meaning of the root note. It is mantra, an eternal designation. It is inscribed in the Book of the Stars, on the Tree of Life, awaiting its actualisation. The initiate of our order is given his real name when he has successfully undergone the most difficult tests. Then it is inscribed in the genealogical tree of the family, in the immortal circle of the Hyperborean initiation.

I am a (relatively) wealthy white American male, which is fine, but it means I have to work hard at reading the Bible right. I have to see myself basically as aligned with Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Caesar. In that case, what does the Bible ask of me? Voluntary poverty? Not necessarily. But certainly the Bible calls me to deep humility — a humility demonstrated in hospitality and generosity. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being a relatively well-off white American male, but I better be humble, hospitable, and generous!

Voluntary loneliness, isolation from others, is the readiest safeguard against the unhappiness that may arise out of human relations. We know what this means: the happiness found along this path is that of peace. Against the dreaded outer world one can defend oneself only by turning away in some other direction, if the difficulty is to be solved single-handed. There is indeed another and better way: that of combining with the rest of the human community and taking up the attack on nature, thus forcing it to obey human will, under the guidance of science.

Octopuses and their relatives have what Woods Hole researcher Roger Hanlon calls electric skin. For its color palette, the octopus uses three layers of three different types of cells near the skin’s surface—all controlled in different ways. The deepest layer, containing the white leucophores, passively reflects background light. This process appears to involve no muscles or nerves. The middle layer contains the tiny iridophores, each 100 microns across. These also reflect light, including polarized light (which humans can’t see, but a number of octopuses’ predators, including birds, do). The iridophores create an array of glittering greens, blues, golds, and pinks. Some of these little organs seem to be passive, but other iridophores appear to be controlled by the nervous system. They are associated with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the first neurotransmitter to be identified in any animal. Acetylcholine helps with contraction of muscles; in humans, it is also important in memory, learning, and REM sleep. In octopuses, more of it “turns on” the greens and blues; less creates pinks and golds. The topmost layer of the octopus’s skin contains chromatophores, tiny sacks of yellow, red, brown, and black pigment, each in an elastic container that can be opened or closed to reveal more or less color. Camouflaging the eye alone—with a variety of patterns including a bar, a bandit’s mask, and a starburst pattern—can involve as many as 5 million chromatophores. Each chromatophore is regulated via an array of nerves and muscles, all under the octopus’s voluntary control.

As these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history—the young supporting their parents, or other relatives, in old age. Indeed, in many poor countries with high infant death rates, like India, the desire to assure oneself of progeny who can provide support in old age is a major reason for high birth rates and large families. The difference between Social Security and earlier arrangements is that Social Security is compulsory and impersonal—earlier arrangements were voluntary and personal. Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter. Children helped their parents out of love or duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The earlier transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken them.

As these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history—the young supporting their parents, or other relatives, in old age. Indeed, in many poor countries with high infant death rates, like India, the desire to assure oneself of progeny who can provide support in old age is a major reason for high birth rates and large families. The difference between Social Security and earlier arrangements is that Social Security is compulsory and impersonal—earlier arrangements were voluntary and personal. Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter. Children helped their parents out of love or duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else’s parents out of compulsion and fear. The earlier transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken them.

A leading voice in the chorus of social transition belongs to the white liberal, whether he speak through the government, the church, the voluntary welfare agencies or the civil rights movement. Over the last few years many Negroes have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Society, but the white liberal who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers tranquillity to equality. In a sense the white liberal has been victimized with some of the same ambivalence that has been a constant part of our national heritage. Even in areas where liberals have great influence— labor unions, schools, churches and politics—the situation of the Negro is not much better than in areas where they are not dominant. This is why many liberals have fallen into the trap of seeing integration in merely aesthetic terms, where a token number of Negroes adds color to a white-dominated power structure.

Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience." Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is. Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others. The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success. Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all. Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace. Loyalty is not demanded; it is created. Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message. The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel. The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way. People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes. Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk. The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.

From another perspective, free will is not illusory at all. So long as we have relatively undamaged brains and relatively normal upbringings, each of us has a very real capacity to execute and to inhibit voluntary action, thanks to our brain’s ability to control our many degrees of freedom. This kind of freedom is both a freedom from and a freedom to. It is a freedom from immediate causes in the world or in the body, and from coercion by authorities, hypnotists and mesmerists, or social-media pushers. It is not, however, freedom from the laws of nature or from the causal fabric of the universe. It is a freedom to act according to our beliefs, values, and goals, to do as we wish to do, and to make choices according to who we are. The reality of this kind of free will is underlined by the fact that it cannot be taken for granted. Brain injuries, or unlucky draws from the lotteries of our genes and our environments, can undermine our ability to exercise voluntary behaviour. People with anarchic hand syndrome make voluntary actions which they do not experience as being theirs, while those with akinetic mutism are unable to make any voluntary actions at all. An awkwardly located brain tumour can transform an engineering student into a mass school shooter, as happened in the case of Charles Whitman, the ‘Texas Tower Sniper’, or engender in a previously blameless teacher a rampant paedophilia – a tendency which disappeared when the tumour was removed, and returned when it grew back.

... we find a complete contradiction in our wishing to live without suffering, a contradiction that is therefore implied by the frequently used phrase “blessed life.” This will certainly be clear to the person who has fully grasped my discussion that follows. This contradiction is revealed in this ethic of pure reason itself by the fact that the Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life (for this is what his ethics always remains). This is like the costly phial of poison to be found among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of oriental despots, and is for the case where the sufferings of the body, incapable of being philosophized away by any principles and syllogisms, are paramount and incurable. Thus its sole purpose, namely blessedness, is frustrated, and nothing remains as a means of escape from pain except death. But then death must be taken with unconcern, just as is any other medicine. Here a marked contrast is evident between the Stoic ethics and all those other ethical systems mentioned above. These ethical systems make virtue directly and in itself the aim and object, even with the most grievous sufferings, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering. But not one of them knew how to express the true reason for rejecting suicide, but they laboriously collected fictitious arguments of every kind. This true reason will appear in the fourth book in connexion with our discussion. But the above-mentioned contrast reveals and confirms just that essential difference to be found in the fundamental principle between the Stoa, really only a special form of eudaemonism, and the doctrines just mentioned, although both often agree in their results, and are apparently related. But the above-mentioned inner contradiction, with which the Stoic ethics is affected even in its fundamental idea, further shows itself in the fact that its ideal, the Stoic sage as represented by this ethical system, could never obtain life or inner poetical truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure with whom one can do nothing. He himself does not know where to go with his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of mankind, and do not enable us to arrive at any perceptive representation thereof. Compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world and voluntary penitents, who are revealed to us, and are actually produced, by the wisdom of India; how different even the Saviour of Christianity, that excellent form full of the depth of life, of the greatest poetical truth and highest significance, who stands before us with perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.

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.

Whatever variant of freedom is espoused, a basic income would enhance it. However, in the liberal tradition a basic income would be both necessary and sufficient, if judged high enough to meet basic needs. In the republican tradition, however, basic income would be necessary but not sufficient; other institutions and policies would be needed properly to advance freedom. A basic income would strengthen the following prosaic or day-to-day freedoms: — the freedom to refuse a job that is onerous, boring, low-paying or just nasty; — the freedom to accept a job that is none of the above but which could not be accepted if financial necessity dictated; — the freedom to stay in a job that pays less than previously or that has become more financially insecure; — the freedom to start a small-scale business venture, which is risky but potentially rewarding; — the freedom to do care work for a relative or friend, or voluntary work in and for the community, that might not be feasible if financial necessity required long hours of paid labour; — the freedom to do creative work and activities of all kinds; — the freedom to risk learning new skills or competences; — the freedom from bureaucratic interference, prying and coercion; — the freedom to form relationships and perhaps set up ‘home’ with someone, often precluded today by financial insecurity; — the freedom to leave a relationship that has turned sour or abusive; — the freedom to have a child; — the freedom to be lazy once in a while, a vital freedom to which we will return. Would alternative social policies do as well on any of these counts? At the very least, a social protection policy should be neutral on behavioural freedom, not moralistic, directive, coercive or punitive. The

You are only able really to refuse and flee, though, when you recognize your power. Those living under the weight of a security regime tend to think of themselves as powerless, dwarfed by against its overarching might. Those in a prison society think of themselves as living in the belly of a Leviathan, consumed by its power. How can we possibly match its firepower, how can we escape its all-seeing eyes and its all-knowing information systems? To find a way out all you have to do is remember the basic recognition of the nature of power explained by Foucault and, before him, Niccolò Machiavelli: power is not a thing but a relation. No matter how mighty and arrogant seems that power standing above you, know that it depends on you, feeds on your fear, and survives only because of your willingness to participate in the relationship. Look for an escape door. One is always there. Desertion and disobedience are reliable weapons against voluntary servitude.

Taking into account the findings of many scholars, Seligman offers the happiness formula: H = S + C + V, where H stands for happiness, S for a set range, C for the circumstances and V for the factors under voluntary control. S is a genetically determined level of happiness, which remains relatively stable throughout the lifespan and returns to its original level soon after the majority of significant life events. It determines happiness up to about 50 per cent. C is the circumstances we’ve already considered (and accounts for about 10 per cent). So, if you want to be happy, get married, join a church but don’t bother about making more money, staying healthy, getting educated or moving to a sunnier climate. Finally, factors under voluntary control (V) refer to intentional and effortful practices a person can choose to engage in (which account for about 40 per cent) (Seligman, 2002). Of course, this formula is far from perfect. Genes and marriage are hardly the same fruit, and are more like apples and pears that cannot be added up. Nevertheless, the formula gives an indication of possibility and the room to manoeuvre (the 40 per cent).

Following Libet’s instructions, all of the five subjects flicked their wrist whenever the spirit (or something) moved them. They also reported where the oscilloscope spot was when they first became aware of the will to move. Libet compared that self-report with concurrent measurements of the onset of the readiness potential. The results of forty trials—which have since been replicated by other researchers—are straightforward to relate, if difficult to interpret. The readiness potential again appeared roughly 550 milliseconds before the muscle moved. Awareness of the decision to act occurred about 100 to 200 milliseconds before the muscle moved. Simple subtraction gives a fascinating result: the slowly building readiness potential appears some 350 milliseconds before the subject becomes consciously aware of his decision to move. This observation, which held for all of the five subjects in each of the six sessions of forty trials, made it seem for all the world as if the initial cerebral activity (the readiness potential) associated with a willed act was unconscious. The readiness potential precedes a voluntary act by some 550 milliseconds. Consciousness of the intention to move appears some 100 to 200 milliseconds before the muscle is activated—and about 350 milliseconds after the onset of the readiness potential.

We are also skeptical of efforts to come up with fundamental alternatives to capitalism. By ‘capitalism’ here, we mean a decentralized economic system of production and exchange in which most of the means of production are in private hands (as opposed to belonging to the government), where most exchange is voluntary (no one can force you to sign a contract against your will), and where most goods have prices that vary based on relative supply and demand instead of being fixed by a central authority. All of these features exist in most economies around the world today. Many are even in place in today’s China, which is still officially communist.

What we are mistaking for a voluntary attraction of animals to humans can be explained by the “imprint phenomenon.” This biological process, first described by Konrad Lorenz, is responsible for the fact that animals, including humans, learn species-specific information, behaviours, and skills at specific points in their development. Imprinting is how animals learn early to attach to their mothers and identify with members of their own species. It is the mechanism that allows us to domesticate animals and nurture intimate relationships with them; as long as we integrate or selves into young animals’ lives before the attachment period ends, we can divert their identification with their own families and species onto ourselves.

Private property is as incompatible with democracy as it is with any other form of political rule. Rather than democracy, justice as well as economic efficiency require a pure and unrestricted private property society an "anarchy of production" in which no one rules anybody, and all producers' relations are voluntary and thus mutually beneficial.

The problem is that little of this "company and support" (and reproductive capacity) is morally obligatory. A person may, without committing a moral wrong by modern standards, leave his spouse due to irreconcilable differences or move away from his friends and relatives to pursue a career or refuse to have children. Providing our company is a voluntary act, and we are under no moral obligation to do so. The company and support of a person is best viewed as a privilege, not a right-with the important exception of a person's voluntarily conceived children (there is a moral duty to care for one's children that renders the suicide of a parent of dependent children, rebuttably, wrong

In i86o the income of the nation's churches and religious voluntary societies came quite close to matching the total receipts of the federal government. Today the ratio of annual federal income to annual religion-related giving is about twenty-five to one.

When he had ate his fill, and proceeded from the urgent first cup and necessary second to the voluntary third which might be toyed with at leisure, without any particular outcry seeming to suggest he should be on his guard, he leant back, spread the city’s news before him, and, by glances between the items, took a longer survey of the room. Session of the Common Council. Vinegars, Malts, and Spirituous Liquors, Available on Best Terms. Had he been on familiar ground, he would have been able to tell at a glance what particular group of citizens in the great empire of coffee this house aspired to serve: whether it was the place for poetry or gluttony, philosophy or marine insurance, the Indies trade or the meat-porters’ burial club. Ships Landing. Ships Departed. Long Island Estate of Mr De Kyper, with Standing Timber, to be Sold at Auction. But the prints on the yellowed walls were a mixture. Some maps, some satires, some ballads, some bawdy, alongside the inevitable picture of the King: pop-eyed George reigning over a lukewarm graphical gruel, neither one thing nor t’other. Albany Letter, Relating to the Behaviour of the Mohawks. Sermon, Upon the Dedication of the Monument to the Late Revd. Vesey. Leases to be Let: Bouwerij, Out Ward, Environs of Rutgers’ Farm. And the company? River Cargos Landed. Escaped Negro Wench: Reward Offered. – All he could glean was an impression generally businesslike, perhaps intersown with law. Dramatic Rendition of the Classics, to be Performed by the Celebrated Mrs Tomlinson. Poem, ‘Hail Liberty, Sweet Succor of a Briton’s Breast’, Offered by ‘Urbanus’ on the Occasion of His Majesty’s Birthday. Over there there were maps on the table, and a contract a-signing; and a ring of men in merchants’ buff-and-grey quizzing one in advocate’s black-and-bands. But some of the clients had the wind-scoured countenance of mariners, and some were boys joshing one another. Proceedings of the Court of Judicature of the Province of New-York. Poor Law Assessment. Carriage Rates. Principal Goods at Mart, Prices Current. Here he pulled out a printed paper of his own from an inner pocket, and made comparison of certain figures, running his left and right forefingers down the columns together. Telescopes and Spy-Glasses Ground. Regimental Orders. Dinner of the Hungarian Club. Perhaps there were simply too few temples here to coffee, for them to specialise as he was used.

The term condescension is used in two significantly different ways in contemporary discourse. It evokes negative emotions when it is used in the sense of “a patronizing attitude or behavior,” but the connotation is much different when it indicates “voluntary descent from one’s rank or dignity in relations with an inferior.”10

Between economic growth and social development, or the development of civil society A lot of classic social theory links the emergence of modern civil society to economic development.28 Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations noted that the growth of markets was related to the division of labor in society: as markets expand and firms take advantage of economies of scale, social specialization increases and new social groups (for example, the industrial working class) emerge. The fluidity and open access demanded by modern market economies undermine many traditional forms of social authority and force their replacement with more flexible, voluntary forms of association. The theme of the transformative effects of the expanding division of labor was central to the writings of nineteenth-century thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim.

Social capital is a capability that arises from the prevalence of trust in a society or in certain parts of it. It can be embodied in the smallest and most basic social group, the family, as well as the largest of all groups, the nation, and in all the other groups in between. Social capital differs from other forms of human capital insofar as it is usually created and transmitted through cultural mechanisms like religion, tradition, or historical habit. Economists typically argue that the formation of social groups can be explained as the result of voluntary contract between individuals who have made the rational calculation that cooperation is in their long-term self-interest. By this account, trust is not necessary for cooperation: enlightened self-interest, together with legal mechanisms like contracts, can compensate for an absence of trust and allow strangers jointly to create an organization that will work for a common purpose. Groups can be formed at any time based on self-interest, and group formation is not culture-dependent. But while contract and self-interest are important sources of association, the most effective organizations are based on communities of shared ethical values. These communities do not require extensive contract and legal regulation of their relations because prior moral consensus gives members of the group a basis for mutual trust. The social capital needed to create this kind of moral community cannot be acquired, as in the case of other forms of human capital, through a rational investment decision. That is, an individual can decide to “invest” in conventional human capital like a college education, or training to become a machinist or computer programmer, simply by going to the appropriate school. Acquisition of social capital, by contrast, requires habituation to the moral norms of a community and, in its context, the acquisition of virtues like loyalty, honesty, and dependability. The group, moreover, has to adopt common norms as a whole before trust can become generalized among its members. In other words, social capital cannot be acquired simply by individuals acting on their own. It is based on the prevalence of social, rather than individual virtues. The proclivity for sociability is much harder to acquire than other forms of human capital, but because it is based on ethical habit, it is also harder to modify or destroy. Another term that I will use widely throughout this book is spontaneous sociability, which constitutes a subset of social capital. In any modern society, organizations are being constantly created, destroyed, and modified. The most useful kind of social capital is often not the ability to work under the authority of a traditional community or group, but the capacity to form new associations and to cooperate within the terms of reference they establish. This type of group, spawned by industrial society’s complex division of labor and yet based on shared values rather than contract, falls under the general rubric of what Durkheim labeled “organic solidarity.”7 Spontaneous sociability, moreover, refers to that wide range of intermediate communities distinct from the family or those deliberately established by governments. Governments often have to step in to promote community when there is a deficit of spontaneous sociability. But state intervention poses distinct risks, since it can all too easily undermine the spontaneous communities established in civil society.

The point here is this: progressivism is best understood as a reaction to liberalism.  Progressivism stands for the proposition that freedom, liberty, voluntary cooperation and the free market are not enough.  To best improve life, the state must intervene with men and women carrying guns and willing to use them against resistance and break up those voluntary relations and impose its will by brute force to achieve different and presumably better results.

Where I live, on the West Coast, most churches tend to be small and to have little influence in the culture. Stark and Finke explain, “A major reason for the lack of church membership in the West is high rates of mobility, which decrease the ability of all voluntary organizations, not just churches, to maintain membership. That is, people move so often that they lack the social ties needed to affiliate with churches.”25 To address this problem, one of the most effective church-planting networks in the United States began in Tacoma, Washington, by using a method of developing intensive community in neighborhoods. Soma Communities fosters deep and intense relationships by teaching church planters to get closely involved in their neighborhoods, opening their homes to neighbors, gathering friends together on a regular basis, and forming “missional communities” focused on discovering and meeting the needs of neighbors and the community. It is these relational bonds that make someone unfamiliar with Christianity want to try it out. Rick Richardson, who directs the evangelism and leadership program at Wheaton College Graduate School, argues that “belonging comes before believing.” He contrasts older methods of evangelism that focused on asking individuals to make a set of commitments. Today, asserts Richardson, presenting four spiritual laws and inviting people to make decisions for Christ is less effective. “Evangelism is about helping people belong so that they can come to believe. So our communities need to be places where people can connect before they have to commit.”26 The idea is held up by social science research showing that converts tend to sign on to a new faith only after their social ties become stronger to those in the new faith than to others outside it. “This often occurs before a convert knows much about what the group believes.

ahead of ICAO audit By Tarun Shukla | 527 words New Delhi: India's civil aviation regulator has decided to restructure its safety board and hire airline safety professionals ahead of an audit by the UN's aviation watchdog ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) announced its intent, and advertised the positions on its website. ICAO told the Indian regulator recently that it would come down to India to conduct an audit, its third in just over a decade, Mint reported on 12 February. Previous ICAO audits had highlighted the paucity of safety inspectors in DGCA. After its 2006 and 2012 audits, ICAO had placed the country in its list of 13 worst-performing nations. US regulator Federal Aviation Authority followed ICAO's 2012 audit with its own and downgraded India, effectively barring new flights to the US by Indian airlines. FAA is expected to visit India in the summer to review its downgrade. The result of the ICAO and FAA audits will have a bearing on the ability of existing Indian airlines to operate more flights to the US and some international destinations and on new airlines' ability to start flights to these destinations. The regulator plans to hire three directors of safety on short-term contracts to be part of the accident investigation board, according to the information on DGCA's website. This is first time the DGCA is hiring external staff for this board, which is critical to ascertain the reasoning for any crashes, misses or other safety related events in the country. These officers, the DGCA said on its website, must have at least 12 years of experience in aviation, specifically on the technical aspects, and have a degree in aeronautical engineering. DGCA has been asked by international regulators to hire at least 75 flight inspectors. It has only 51. India's private airlines offer better pay and perks to inspectors compared with DGCA. The aviation ministry told DGCA in January to speed up the recruitment and do whatever was necessary to get more inspectors on board, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. DGCA has also announced it will hire flight operations inspectors as consultants on a short-term basis for a period of one year with a fixed remuneration of `1.25 lakh per month. "There will be a review after six months and subsequent continuation will be decided on the basis of outcome of the review," DGCA said in its advertisement. The remuneration of `1.25 lakh is higher than the salary of many existing DGCA officers. In its 2006 audit, ICAO said it found that "a number of final reports of accident and serious incident investigations carried out by the DGCA were not sent to the (member) states concerned or to ICAO when it was applicable". DGCA had also "not established a voluntary incident reporting system to facilitate the collection of safety information that may not otherwise be captured by the state's mandatory incident reporting system". In response, DGCA "submitted a corrective action plan which was never implemented", said Mohan Ranganthan, an aviation safety analyst and former member of government appointed safety council, said of DGCA. He added that the regulator will be caught out this time. Restructuring DGCA is the key to better air safety, said former director general of civil aviation M.R. Sivaraman. Hotel industry growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16: Icra By P.R. Sanjai | 304 words Mumbai: Rating agency Icra Ltd on Monday said Indian hotel industry revenue growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16, driven by a modest increase in occupancy and small increase in rates. "Industry wide revenues are expected to grow by 5-8% in 2014-15. Over the next 12 months, Icra expects RevPAR (revenue per available room) to improve by 7-8% driven by up to 5% pickup in occupancies and 2-3% growth in average room rates (ARR)," Icra said. Further, margins are expected to remain largely flat for 2014-15 while

In fact, the Nazis did not have a euthanasia program, in the proper sense of the word. Their so-called euthanasia program was not motivated by concern for the suffering of those killed. If it had been, they would not have kept their operations secret, deceived relatives about the cause of death of those killed, or exempted from the program certain privileged classes, such as veterans of the armed services or relatives of the euthanasia staff. Nazi ‘euthanasia’ was never voluntary and often was involuntary rather than nonvoluntary. ‘Doing away with useless mouths’ – a phrase used by those in charge – gives a better idea of the objectives of the program than ‘mercy-killing’. Both racial origin and ability to work were among the factors considered in the selection of patients to be killed. It was the Nazi belief in the importance of maintaining a pure Aryan Volk – a quasi-mystical racist concept that was thought of as more important than mere individuals’ lives – that made both the so-called euthanasia program and later the entire holocaust possible. Proposals for the legalization of euthanasia, on the other hand, are based on respect for autonomy and the goal of avoiding pointless suffering.

For one thing, possibly this war has more profoundly shaken the Chinese clan-family system than any previous catastrophe. Of course, the system is not unique to China but characteristic of many feudal and semi-feudal societies surviving in Asia. It is still vigorous in India and is probably stronger in Japan, with peculiar differences, than in China. Total war imposed on the individual Chinese heavy and complicated problems which the limited resources of familism were no longer able to meet alone. The mass need for security in the face of unprecedented catastrophe results in new forms of social combination and interdependence, and a greater readiness to submit to broad group authority. Millions of people have been separated from their relatives and even their parents, some by army conscription, some in the confusion of escape from death, but thousands by voluntary desertion of family for country. If a Chinese Gallup could circulate a questionnaire among China's youth today, to ask, "What is your first duty?" the finding might be considered revolutionary. Quite a percentage would answer, "To China" instead of "To my family." Confucius said wu wei meant simply that the highest duty of man is to serve one's parents while they are alive, to bury them with propriety when dead, and to worship them with propriety when buried. "All you need to take with you to govern China," Akira Kazami advised the Japanese Cabinet of which he is chief secretary, "is the Confucian Analects." But in many ways the 2,500 years of Confucian domination of the Chinese intellect is being overthrown. Filial piety is no longer the glorified thing it was once.

larynx (pp. 352–354), and (2) smaller intrinsic muscles that control tension in the glottal vocal folds or that open and close the glottis. These smaller muscles insert on the thyroid, arytenoid, and corniculate cartilages. The opening or closing of the glottis involves rotational movements of the arytenoid cartilages. When you swallow, both sets of muscles work together to prevent food or drink from entering the glottis. Food is crushed and chewed into a pasty mass, known as a bolus, before being swallowed. Muscles of the neck and pharynx then elevate the larynx, bending the epiglottis over the glottis, so that the bolus can glide across the epiglottis rather than falling into the larynx. While this movement is under way, the glottis is closed. Foods or liquids that touch the vestibular folds or glottis trigger the coughing reflex. In a cough, the glottis is kept closed while the chest and abdominal muscles contract, compressing the lungs. When the glottis is opened suddenly, a blast of air from the trachea ejects material that blocks the entrance to the glottis. Sound Production How do you produce sounds? Air passing through your open glottis vibrates its vocal folds and produces sound waves. The pitch of the sound depends on the diameter, length, and tension in your vocal folds. The diameter and length are directly related to the size of your larynx. You control the tension by contracting voluntary muscles that reposition the arytenoid cartilages relative to the thyroid cartilage. When the distance increases, your vocal folds tense and the pitch rises. When the distance decreases, your vocal folds relax and the pitch falls. Children have slender, short vocal folds, so their voices tend to be high pitched. At puberty, the larynx of males enlarges much more than that of females. The vocal cords of an adult male are thicker and longer, so they produce lower tones than those of an adult female. Sound production at the larynx is called phonation (fo.-NA .-shun; phone, voice). Phonation is one part of speech production. Clear speech also requires articulation, the modification of those sounds by voluntary movements of other structures, such as the tongue, teeth, and lips to form words. In a stringed instrument, such as a guitar, the quality of the sound produced does not depend solely on the nature of the vibrating string. Rather, the entire instrument becomes involved as the walls vibrate and the composite sound echoes within the hollow body. Similar amplification and resonance take place within your pharynx, oral cavity, nasal cavity, and paranasal sinuses. The combination gives you the particular and distinctive sound of your voice. That sound changes when you have a sinus infection and your nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses are filled with mucus rather than air.

A new awareness of the integral role that social networks play in long-distance migration goes beyond traditional ‘rational-choice and decision-making models’ drawn from classical economics that content themselves with explaining migration as the outcome of a ‘cost-benefit analysis of the most favorable destination.’ According to recent theory, something more than the push and pull of differential labor markets, hunger, or the search for religious freedom sends people into long-distance emigration. Voluntary migrations do not depend merely on autonomous individuals weighing the costs and benefits of uprooting themselves. Rather, social networks and relationships bind uprooted people on to another like the links in a chain. ‘Chain migration’ is sustained from within, and indeed ‘can become self-perpetuating,’ as ‘each act of migration itself creates the social structure needed to sustain’ further migration. News of another’s good fortune in a distance place, information about unforeseen opportunities, invitations to follow in another’s migratory footsteps, or a familial obligation to do so—the long reach of social relations such as these are the incentive that draws people into exile in other lands and accounts for the enormous scale of some systems of international migration.

Such proposals may seem impractical and even incredible. But what is truly impractical and incredible is that America, with its enormous wealth, has allowed Watts to become what it is and that a commission empowered to study this explosive situation should come up with answers that boil down to voluntary actions by business and labor, new public relations campaigns for municipal agencies, and information-gathering for housing, fair employment, and welfare departments. The Watts manifesto is a response to realities that the McCone Report is barely beginning to grasp. Like the liberal consensus which it embodies and reflects, the commission's imagination and political intelligence appear paralyzed by the hard facts of Negro deprivation it has unearthed, and it lacks the political will to demand that the vast resources of contemporary America be used to build a genuinely great society that will finally put an end to these deprivations. And what is most impractical and incredible of all is that we may very well continue to teach impoverished, segregated, and ignored Negroes that the only way they can get the ear of America is to rise up in violence.

voluntary compliance,” to strive for agreeable, or at least not disagreeable, relations with the taxpaying public, and so on. He is a less gregarious and a more reflective man than Caplin, however, and this difference has had

Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution.

We also sought a voluntary interview with the President. After more than a year of discussion, the President declined to be interviewed. [~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~] During the course of our discussions, the President did agree to answer written questions on certain Russia-related topics, and he provided us with answers. He did not similarly agree to provide written answers to questions on obstruction topics or questions on events during the transition.

This passage begins by asserting that even such an ordinary and voluntary action as calling Jesus lord requires the cooperation of the Spirit. It goes on to list a variety of spiritual gifts, each one an energēma (something performed) of the Spirit. They include not only extraordinary gifts like the working of miracles, but also more ordinary qualities such as faith and the “word of wisdom.” Again there is no dividing line between the natural and the divine. Any believer is called to a life of continual cooperation with the Spirit, a cooperation that can manifest itself in any number of ways, both exceptional and mundane. To speak of synergy could be misleading if it suggested a picture of two equal agents who simply choose to work together. Plainly, since in these cases one is the Creator and the other a creature, the action of the latter depends for its reality upon the active support of the former. I take it that Paul interprets this notion in light of the common experience (which he had vividly shared) of feeling that one’s actions were not truly one’s own while one was mired in sin and self-deception. On his view, synergy, the cooperation of God and man, is neither a symmetrical relation nor one in which the divine overpowers and replaces the human. It is rather one in which the human becomes fully human by embracing the divine. This is not a radically new idea; indeed, it is a prominent theme in the Old Testament.10 What is new is the use of the vocabulary of energeia to express it.

Améry’s On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death (1999) spans two events: his first and failed suicidal attempt and the second and successful one in Salzburg on October 17, 1978 (Lorenz 1991: 115). Améry wrote that the “rescue” from the first attempt was one of the “worse [acts of violence] that had ever been done” to him (1999: 79). This was partly related to the experience of being reduced by the medical personnel to the “object of rescue.

... on May 1, 1855, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell were married. Before the minister began the ceremony, Henry read the protest which he and Lucy had prepared: "While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relation of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare this act ... implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to, such of the present laws of marriage as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess