Existence, as we know it, is full of sorrow. To mention only one minor point every man is a condemned criminal, only he does not know the date of his execution. This is unpleasant for every man. Consequently every man does everything possible to postpone the date, and would sacrifice anything that he has if he could reverse the sentence. Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by promising their adherents some such reward as immortality. No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a well-organized religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least unable to demonstrate its innocence. Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing that we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of experiment. Is there any truth at all in the claims of various religions Let us examine the question.
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Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
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The system -- the American one, at least -- is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.
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The change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend on other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economies, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand.
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For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. To forget it! You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. But the Solar System! I protested. What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
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Under the rule of the free market ideology, we have gone through two decades of an energy crisis without an effective energy policy. Because of an easy and thoughtless reliance on imported oil, we have no adequate policy for the conservation of gasoline and other petroleum products. We have no adequate policy for the development or use of other, less harmful forms of energy. We have no adequate system of public transportation.
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Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?
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He had the courage to admit that a terrible wrong had been done to our country and people through the imposition of the system of apartheid,
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The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they posses a really effective system of mind-manipulation. Under a scientific dictator, education will rea
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Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.
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The longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: 'Frosty the Snowman' is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts.
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Let us be very careful not to fall into the trap of the world. The world views things only relative to man and to self. The Word of God views things relative to the Father, Son, and Spirit. Mankind is not the center of all things. No matter how great anyone's name might become, it is still far behind His. Our name comes from His life the name of our Lord comes from the resurrection--the event unique to Him. The world has a problem it seeks to honor, uphold, exonerate and generally praise itself. Our place and the place of the entire world system is to praise and exalt God. When people of the Bible caught a glimpse of Him, their lives were changed. Perhaps our lives remain stagnate because we do not spend enough time looking at Him.
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I think we're just trying to keep it simple. At this point of the season, we have to just trust our system and go out and play.
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Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be establishedat every level--there's little bargaining, a little give and take,but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
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Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing...
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Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yieldAgainst stupidity the very godsThemselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,Resplendent daughter of the head divine,Wise foundress of the system of the world,Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed,Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.
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And then, Sir, there is this consideration, that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
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Affection cannot be manufactored or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence.
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Women's sex-partner numbers are dependent on things other than attractiveness. Because of the way that the sexual system in humans works, women are choosy. They are being sexually competed for . They have to be wooed and all that.
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You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accomodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself-educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this society.
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I would like to suggest that the history of science is the history of an enlarging understanding of the universe, its evolution, its history, and its structure. We have engaged the universe at the very limits of our capacity. We have explored the world of the microcosm and the world of the macrocosm. We have found at both extremes incredible complexity. The universe, beginning from an unimaginably hot and dense singularity, evolved through a series of stages, each producing the condition necessary for the succeeding stage. Our sun, our solar system, our planet, our own beings are all late stages of this evolving universe. The insights of cosmology and theoretical astronomy have served to tie us ever more tightly into the emerging story of the universe itself. The history of the universe is our history. We emerged from the same vast processes that created galaxies and suns and stars and planets. We are all of us recycled stardust.
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-and that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete. The color-coded warning system is not raised. The Homeland Security secretary, Tom Ridge, does not attend the announcement. Number eight. July 6, 2004. Democratic p
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By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.
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And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways', Yossarian continued 'There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
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That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much revernece can you have for a supreme being who finds it necassary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His system of creation?
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Animal model systems in cancer research have been a total failure…not a single essential drug for the treatment of human cancer was first picked up by an animal model system. All of the drugs in wide current clinical use were only put into animal model systems after finding clinical clues to their therapeutic possibility. The money was spent…for two main reasons. First, it was a highly profitable undertaking for certain medical schools and research institutions that were incapable of doing any genuine cancer research. Second, it was sustained by a superstitious belief in a grossly unscientific notion: mice are miniature men…in sum, from the standpoint of current scientific theory of cancer, the whole mystique of the animal model systems is hardly more than superstitious nonsense…the moral is that animal model systems not only kill animals, they also kill humans. There is no good factual evidence to show the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer.
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What the city of Charlotte has done is sell their system as a quality of life issue.
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In describing the Mound-builders no effort has been made to paint their costume, their modes of life or their system of government. They are presented to the reader almost exclusively under a single aspect, and under the influence of a single emotion. It matters not to us whether they dwelt under a monarchical or popular form of polity; whether king or council ruled their realms; nor, in fine, what was their exact outward condition. It is enough for us to know, and enough for our humanity to inquire, that they existed, toiled, felt and suffered; that to them fell, in these pleasant regions, their portion of the common heritage of our race, and that around those ancient hearth-stones, washed to light on the banks of the far western rivers, once gossiped and enjoyed life, a nation that has utterly faded away.
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It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.
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