Quote: All this writers demonsrate that independence, individualism, and self-reliance were not ideas confined to teh American Classic authors but were ideals deeply embedded in the AMerican consciousness. (the writings of the little writers reflect the ideals of hte big writers; of course they read hte big ones)Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The list of some books I remember of reading between 2003 and 2004:
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
Veronika decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho
By the river Piedra I sat down and wept, by Paulo Coelho
Fifth mountain, by Paulo Coelho
The Valkyries, by Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho
James Joyce-n The portrait of an artist as a young man
The sun also rises by Ernst Hemingway
Faust by Goethe
Ethic for the new Millennium by Dalai Lama (His holiness)
1984 by George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein
Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Stephen King, Night Shift (Collection)
Steven Hawking, Brief history of time
Thomas More, Utopia
Tao Te ching, Lao Tzu
The Limits of Sceince by Peter Medawar
Oscar Wild, The picture of Dorien GRey
Dalai Lama book
Critique of pure reason, Kant (aborted half way throuhg)
Is Islamic threat myth of reality, Esposito
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzche (took me a month to read it)
Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeere
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
Metamorphesis, Franz Kafka
The Prince, Machivelli
One hundred years of solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Ballad of reading gaol, Oscar Wilde
Your personality and you by Sarah Splaver
Foreign affairs Fareed Zakaria
Culture is hot. By culture I dont mean Wagner and Abstract Expresionnism - they have always been hot - but rather culture as an explanation for social phnomena. ... Cultural explanations persist because intellectuals like them. They make valuable the detailed knowledge of countries histories, which intellectuals have in great supply. They add an air of mystery and complexity to the study of societies.... But culture itself can be shaped and changed. Behind so many cultural attitudes, tastes, and preferences lie the political and economic forces that shaped them.
George Orwell 1984
Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records toldthe same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' Andyet the past, It was true that therewas no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of printand a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. He knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.'
-Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, incontradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.
- Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.
- With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows. -He knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it.
They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you've beaten them.'
- In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.
-It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The
first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual.
Oscar Wilde, Ballad of reading gaol
OF HEAVEN OR HELL I HAVE NO THOUGHT OR FEAR,
SEEING I KNOW NO OTHER GOD BUT THEE;
Look heaven-ward! shall God allow this thing?
Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down,
and smite the spoiler with the sword of pain.
The cycles of revolving years
May free my heart from all its fears
And teach my lips a song to sing
Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Sing on ! sing on! I woudl be drunk wihtlife.
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!
the little white clouds are racing over hte sky,
and the fields are strewn with the gold of hte flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue
A cooling wind crept form the land of snows,
nad hte warm south with tender tears of dew
It never feels decay but gathers life
From the pure sunlight and hte supreme air,
We live beneath Time's wasting sovereignty.
It is the child of all eternity.
The kingfisher flies like an arrow , and wounds the air.
Book on Chaos
Chaos may cause uncertainty but it also creates the opportunities that create hope and change
But one of the central concepts of chaos theory is that while it is impossible to exactly predict the state of a system, it is generally quite possible, even easy, to model the overall behavior of a system.
Chaos theory predicts that complex nonlinear systems are inherently unpredictable--but, at the same time, chaos theory also insures that often, the way to express such an unpredictable system lies not in exact equations, but in representations of the behavior of a system--in plots of strange attractors or in fractals.
Instead of looking for strict equations conforming to statistical data, we can now look for dynamic systems with behavior similar in nature to the statistical data--systems, that is, with similar attractors. Chaos theory provides a sound framework with which to develop scientific knowledge.
And of course, chaos theory gives people a wonderfully interesting way to become more interested in mathematics, one of the more unpopular pursuits of the day.
Chaos theory models how the world works, from weather patterns, to stock market shifts, to art, to brain patterns, to social structures, to something as seemingly non-scientific as interpersonal relationships themselves.
Though the world is infinitely complicated, there appear to be spooky patterns that exist within the world.
Fractals {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
While chaos theory attempts to explain how dynamical systems change over time (and why they change over time), fractal geometry deals with the actual images that these dynamical systems produce.Why should systems that are so dynamically complex and chaotic possess this self-similarity? This self-similarity is often explained in terms of holism, an interpretation of the geometry in terms of parts. In his book Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos, science writer, John Briggs explains the holistic phenomenon in terms of the weather,
Each time the iteration is conducted, more lines to the figure are introduced, and thus the total perimeter of the figure is lengthened. However, the area of the Koch curve is never greater than a semi-circle drawn around the curve itself. Thus, what results is a figure with an infinite perimeter that has a bounded area. By thinking in terms of two or three dimensions, this poses a clear problem. How can something have an infinite perimeter yet a finite area?
The idea that there is a way to model seemingly unpredictable processes, and that this process holds both beautiful and definite structures, points to the conclusion that there might be a greater "force" governing the behavior of the universe.}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
However, the reason that humans are able to see the past but not the future is because they are positioned the wrong way; humans can only look backwards. Perhaps someone else, existing outside of time, sitting on a bench looking at the mountain range could see time in its entirety. Even with the puzzling implications of quantum chaos, there is no reason to believe that the future is not just as fixed as the past until a better conception of time is understood.To offer some conciliation however, even if all events in the universe (both “past” and “future”) are already known by an observer outside of time, this still does not imply that they are caused. Just think about the doctor who advises his smoking patient. The doctor knows that with the patient’s weak lungs, if he does not quite smoking he will soon develop lung cancer. This does not mean that the doctor causes the cancer however. The doctor can foresee a future event, but he does not cause that future event. Similarly, it is not entirely accurate to say that just because the future may be already known by an observer that exists outside of time that free will must be abandoned.
Mandelbrot eventually obtained all of the available data on cotton prices, dating back to 1900. When he analyzed the data with IBM's computers, he noticed an astonishing fact: The numbers that produced aberrations from the point of view of normal distribution produced symmetry from the point of view of scaling. Each particular price change was random and unpredictable. But the sequence of changes was independent on scale: curves for daily price changes and monthly price changes matched perfectly. Incredibly, analyzed Mandelbrot's way, the degree of variation had remained constant over a tumultuous sixty-year period that saw two World Wars and a depression.
Later, a scientist by the name of Feigenbaum was looking at the bifurcation diagram again. He was looking at how fast the bifurcations come. He discovered that they come at a constant rate. He calculated it as 4.669. In other words, he discovered the exact scale at which it was self-similar. Make the diagram 4.669 times smaller, and it looks like the next region of bifurcations. He decided to look at other equations to see if it was possible to determine a scaling factor for them as well. Much to his surprise, the scaling factor was exactly the same. Not only was this complicated equation displaying regularity, the regularity was exactly the same as a much simpler equation. He tried many other functions, and they all produced the same scaling factor, 4.669.
Crime and punishment
think this is only the flower and the real fruit is to come.
Shall not one little crime be effaced and atoned for by a thousand good deeds?
An extraodinary ma n has a right not officially but understood but from and by his very indivisuality to permit his consience to overstep certain bounds only so far as the realisation on one of his ideas may require it.
They did not know that a new life is not given for nothing; that it has to be paid dearly for and only acquired by muich parience and suffering and great future thoughts.
Critique of pure reason
At the same time, this indifference , which has arisen in the wolr of science, and which relates to that kind of knowledge which we should wish to see destroyed the last, is a phenomenon that well deserves our attention and reflection. It is plainly no th eeffect of the levity, but of the matured judgement of the age which refuses to be any longer entertained with illusory knowledge, It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks-- that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, no in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than the critical investigation of pure reason.
... it is my task to answer the question how far reason can go, without the material presented and the aid furnished by experience.
... he other considers the pure understanding itself, its possibility and its powers of cognition-- that is, form a sujective point of view; and, although this exposition is of great importance, it does not belong essentially to th emain purpose of the work, because the grand question is what and how much can reason and understanding, apart from experience, cognize, and not, how is the faulty of thought itself possible?
... We do not enlarge but disfifure the sciences when we lose sight of their respective limits and allow them to run into one another.
... they learnt that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follwo, as it were, in the leading strings of nature, but must proceed in advance with principles of judgement according to unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply its questions.
... Or, if the path has only hitherto been missed, what indications do we possess to guide us in a renewed investigation, and to enable us to hope for greater success that has fallen to the lot of our predecessors?
(Disorder versus order in brain function)
Determinism
Laplaceean view of determinism.
An intellifence knowing all the forces acting in the nature art a given instant as well as the momentary positions of all things int eh universe would bne able to comprehend in one single formula athe motions of the largest bodies as well as a lightest atoms in the world provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain the future mas wella s the past would be present to its eyes. (Laplace 1820)
Chapter 9. (Brain creates macroscopic order from microscopic disorder by neuro-dynamics in perception)
Conclusion
The essential difference between the theories for passive versus active perception comes down to the source of the order created from disorder. In the passive view, the order is derived from a postulated “object” that exists outside the brain, so the form that is constructed within the brain is called “representation” of the object. In the active vie, the form that results from exploratory action into the world outside is constructed inside the brain by a learning process of generalization. The construct embodies the meaning of an experience with an “object”, so it can not be said to represent the object. The reason that brain must work this way is that the world is infinitely complex, whereas brains are finite state systems. The “objects” that occupy the world shared by all observers are different for every observer, and the delineation of each object on every presentation is never quite the same. (that is the reason of failure to artificial intelligence)
Noise is essential for maintaining the health of neurons and it provides the unstructures pre and post synaptic co-activity that is required to form new attractors with Hebbian learning instead of merely reinforcing existing attractors.
Chapter 11. (Conciousness, schemata and language)
Divine comedy
First: Virtues pagans
Second: Wanton-- last
Third: Gluttonous
Fourth: avaricious(greed)
Fifth: irascible (characterized by anger)
Sixth: heresiarch
Seventh: violent
You citizens were wont to call me Ciacco;
For the pernicious sin of gluttony
I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain.
Distributing the light in equal measure;
He in like manner to the mundane splendours
Ordained a general ministress and guide,
That she might change at times the empty treasures
From race to race, from one blood to another,
Beyond resistance of all human wisdom.
More than a thousand at the gates I saw
Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily
Were saying, "Who is this that without death
Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?"
And my sagacious Master made a sign
Of wishing secretly to speak with them.
O ye who have undistempered intellects,
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses!
Kurl Hahn - Harrogate speech
Originality
Shortly before he died Prince Max lead an enthusiastic America friend around his Salem schools. The friend asked, "What are you proudest of in your beautiful schools?" Prince Max answered, "I am proudest of the fact that there is nothing original in the,; it is stolen from everywhere, from teh Boy Scouts, the British Public Schools, from Plato, from Goethe." Then the American said. "But oughtn't you aim at being original?" Prince Max answered, " In medicine as in education, you must harvest the wisdom of thousand years. IF you ever come across a surgeon who wants to take out your appendix in the most original manner possible, I strongly advise you to go to another surgeon."
May I ebgin by quoting what Charles Dickens has said in Great Expectations:
"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this and think for a moment of the long chain of iron and gold, of thorns or flowers that would never have bound you but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day."
I dont blame the youngsters, I blame the adult world and I also blame those schools which do not accept a remedial responsibility, in other words, which fail to introduce into the timetable health - giving activities designed to develop certain tastes and distastes. I am referring to emotional habits likely to make the young resistant to the insidious influences to which tehy are inevitably exposed.
Faith in human nature is viatl element in this humanity.
In a democratic society you can only accelerate develop,ents by example.
He who drills and labours, accepts hardship, boredom and dangers, all for the sake of helping his brother in peril and distress discovers GOd's purpose in his inner life.
"Hiroshima Nagasaki: apictorial record of the atomic destruction"
HIroshima
OUt of those blue skies come hte two most powertfil weapoms of mass destruction yet devised, the first two atomic bombs used in war the first at 8:15 am on August the 6th on Hiroshima, cored with uranium; the second, of plutonium, on Nagasiki at11:02 am on august the 9th. 130,00-140,000 people die instantly in Hiroshima and anotehr 60,000 - 70,000 in Nagasaki.
hibakusha -- bomb affected survivors
OH my GOODNESS!!!
Aim: It is published in the hope that people all over the world, especially younger generation will realize what is the meaning of the damage and after effects of the atomic bombing and the lingering suffering of the hibakusha. (HSI)
History of psycoanalysis
It was proved that psychoanalysis could not clear up anything actual. except by going back to something in the past.
It may, therefore, be said that the psychoanalytic theory endeavors to explain two experiences, which result in a striking and unexpected manner during the attempt to trace back the morbid symptoms of a neurotic to their source in his life-history; viz., the facts of transference and of resistance.
Interpretation of dreams
Interpretation of Dreams (Sigmund Freud) page 47
Dream converts the slight sensations perceived in sleep into intense sensations, which led him to conclude that dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of an incipient physical change which escaped observation during the day.
Symbolic dream interpretation - envisages the dream-content as a whole and seeks to replace it by another content which is intelligible and in certain respects analogous.
"cipher method" - it treats the dream as a king of secret code in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, accordign to an established key. The essential point, then in this procedure is that the work of interpretation is not apploied to the entirety of the dream, but to each portion of the dreamcontent severally as though the dream were a conglomerate in which each fragment calls for special treatment.
- that is to say they are suppressed before they are preceived. p.10
As will be seen, the point is to induce a psychic state which is in some degree analogous, as reagards the distribution of psychic evergy (mobile attention), to teh state of the mind before falling asleep -- and also, of course, to the hypnotic state. On falling asleep the "undesired ideas" emerge owing to teh slachening of a certain arbitrary (adn, of course, also critical) action which is allowed to influence the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to speak of fatigue as the reason of this slackeningl the merging undesired ideas are changed into visual and auditory images.
p11. In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and teh ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.
p25. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. Our next purppose should be ascertain whether this is a feneral characteristic of drea,s or whether it is only the accidental content of the particular dream.
Chapter3: The dreams are also to fulfill the wishes we have for example, if we are thirsty then we dream of water etc. sexual desire also can be an example.
p34. If we call this peculiarity of dreams -- namely, that they need elucidation -- the phenomenon of distortion in dreams, a second question then arises: what is the origin of this distortion in dreams?
# During sleep one is incapable of finding an adequate expression for one's dream thoughts.
Your opinion that the dream is nonsencse probably signifies merely an inner resistance to its interpretation. Don't let yourself be put off.
Here, as before, what the dream expresses is only my wish that things might be so. It affection (which happened in his dream) does not belong to the latent content, to the thoughts behind teh dream; it stands in opposition to this content; it is calculated to conceal the knowledge conveyed by the interpretation. Probably it precisely its function. The distortion is here shown to be intentional -- it is a means of disguise.
We should then assume that in every human being there exist, as the primary cause of dream formation, two psycis forces (tendencies or systems), one of which forms the wish expressed by the dream, while otehr exercises a censorship over this dream - wish thereby enforcing on it a distortion.
They are wish dreams in so far as every dream emanates from the first instance, while the second instance behaves towards the dream only in a defensive, not in a constructive manner.
Identification is a highly important motive in the mechanism of hyterical symptoms; by thbis means patients are enabled to express in their syptoms not merely their own experiences but the experiences of quite a number of otehr people; they can suffer, as it were for a whole mass of people and fill all the parts of a drama with their won personlaities.
From my essay on the etiology of anxiety neurosis, you will see taht I note coitus interruptus as one of the factors responsible for the development of neytoruc fear.
Islam today
Preface
The Italian Prime Minister voiced what many thought inprivate “Islam was the enemy of Western civilization”
1.
Introduction: Raising Questions
Commentators are already seeing the confrontation in apocalyptic terms and calling it the last crusade.
Some western scholars of Islam talk of many Islams, a “Moroccan Islam”, an “Indian Islam” and so on. This is inaccurate and misleading. There is one Islam only.
How, then are Muslims different ? The answer is that they are not. Islam is sociology. The Prophet’s saying encourage Muslims to greet one another warmly, to avoid gossip and slander , to accept invitations to visit one another. Islam also encourages “social activity, a sense of community, a sense of belonging sense of place.
Jihad: The concept in western literature and usage has come to mean the idea of holy war, of Muslim fanaticism. In fact jihad means struggle, and there are various forms of it; physical confrontation is just one. The hole Phorophet identified the greatest jihad as the struggle to master our passions and instincts.
Islam is seen in the West as an evangelical religion, wishing to spread the message and encourage conversion. This is correct. Muslims are enthusiastic about dawah, the call to Islam.
2:
What is Islam?
AD 610 when Muhammad was 40, he heard voice of angel Gabriel. Prophet was born around 540 AD in Makkah. He married with Khadijah. He had four daughters named Zainab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kalthum and Fatimah. During the Ramadan he was meditating in Hira suddenly Angel came and asked him to read. But he could not read. Khadijah was first female Muslim and Ali was first male one.
The journey in 622 across the desert is crusial event for Muslims. It is called the hijra, which means departure. Even today, the Muslim system of dating years starts with the Prophet’s journey; AD 622 is the first year of the Muslim calendar.
Opening if the fast during Ramadan by eating a date is sunnah.
Muslims don’t allow images or representations if the prophet. The reason is rooed in the history of Islam. As Islam rejected any form of idol worship, Muslims feared that images of the Prophet would soon become objects of worship: nothing must detract from the worship of God.
The message: the holy Quran.
Japanese History period
(17 injunctions)
no significience occured until 645
1. Nara period 710- 794
2. Heian period 794- 1185
3. Kamakura period 1185- 1338
4. Muramachi period 1338- 1573 Edo-- Tokyo
5. Tokugawa period 1603- 1867
(Matthew Perry sailed into Edo bay in 1853
Meiji restoration of 1868
6. Meiji period 1868- 1912 purveyor-- someone who provides food
indispensable- absolutely neccesary
from Kurl Hahn
Victopry comes in leaps and bounds of clever adaptation, the string of successes and compromises through which one creates for oneself a place in the world.
He identified the worst declines as those in fitness, skill and care, self0 discipline, initiative and enterprise, memory and imagination and compassion. Among the unusual assumptions underlying all forms of instruction at Salem was Hahn's conviction that students should experience failure as well as success. They should learn to overcome negative inclinations within themselves and prevail against adversity. He believed, moveover, that students should learn to discipline their own needs and desires for the good of the community. They should realize, through their own experience, the connection between self-discovery and service. He also insisted that true learning required periods of silence and solitude as well as directed activity.
The goal of learning , in his view, was compensatory: to purify the destructive inclinations of the human personality, to redress the imbalances in modern ways of living, to develop each person's disabilities to their maximum potential and to place new found strength in service of those in need.
The center emerged as a discovery of who he really was inside, the gift of suddenly knowing what he had to do, and would do, when he bumped up against his own limitations. It was the scale of values, teh plan of life, the desired future he asserted as his response to adversity.
He came to see that there exosts in everyone a grand passion, an outlandish thirst for adventure, a desire to live boldly and vivdly in the journey through life.
Hahn believed that some separation from the existing human world into the inrensity of a journey -quest, confronting challenges and transforming opportunities for service, could change the balance of power in young people.
THey hoped to discover the combination of challenging experiences that might help young people discover new ways of organizing their lives and working with other people.
The problem of how to educate the whole person cannot be solved without learnign how to civilize human communities, which in turn cannot be done without preparing the entire world society in the arts of living harmoniously at the highest levels of potential activity and understanding. FInally, they engaged in sevice activities, experiencing the value of compassion through direct action on behalf of the community or specific people in need.
Through OUtward Bound, Hahn hoped to foster a deeper intensity of commitment in the rite of passage from youth to adult life. He was intent on creating more dramatic challenges and victories for the young than were available in conventianal forms of schooling.
But at its heart, in every time and place, is Hahn's own center, his conviction that it is possible, even in a relatively short tme to introduce greater balance and compassion into human lives by impelling people into iexperienes which show them they can rise above adversity adn overcome their won defeatism. They can make more of their lives than they thought tehy could and learn to serve others with their strength.
The man's center remains, beckoning like an adventure. Arise from weakness to teach about strength. Turn self-discovery inot acts of compassion. Everywhere defend human decency.
Tao Te ching
8. Great good i ssaid to be like water
sustaining life with no conscious striving
flowing naturally, providing nourishment
found even in places
which desiring man rejects
10
Maintaining unity is virtuous
for the inner world of thought is one
with the external world
of action and of things.
13 Being watchful he had no fear of dangerl
being responsive he had no need of fear.
17
it happened of its own accord
36. That which is soft and supple, may overcome the hard and strong;
38. A true good man is unaware of the good deeds he performs. Conversely a foolish man must try continuously to be good.
40. All things are born of being;
being is born of non-being;
33. Will power may bring perseverance;
but to have tranquility is to endure,
beigin protected for all his days
He whose ideas remain in the world
is present for all time.
38. He who is truly great
does notn upon the surface dwell,
but on what lies beneath.
It is said that the fruit is his concern
rather than the flower.
43. .. The wise man understands full well,
that wordless teaching can take place,
and that actions should occur
without the wish for self-advancement.
53. When the court has adornments in profusion
the fields are full of weeds
and the granaries are bare
55. From constancy, there develops harmony,
and from harmony, enlightenment.
Leap of faith
To the school's credit, uit offered a community service program tutoring non english speaking students in apublic school in Harlem and I volunteered to serve. Initially I was frustrated by my inability to make any meaningful progress with the stedsents many of whom had setious learning disabilities and needed far more support than I or anyone available to them would ever be able to provide. I eventually made some headway but the most important lesson I took away fromt eh experience was just how difficult it is to break the vicious cycle of ignorance and poverty.
One of the goals of the "White revolition" the Shah had advanced in 1963 was ambitious land reform that would redistribute the vast holdings of the rich few to the many rural poor. The Shah had also chjapioned women's rights.
It was not until I started working and living in Jordan that I befan to understand the enormity of this human tragedy.
Mind and mysteries
Mind and matter are two aspects as subject and object of one and the same all-full Brahman, who is neither and yet includes both. Mind precedes matter. This is Vedantic theory. Matter precedes mind. This is scientific theory. A Raja Yogi penetrates through different layers of mind by intense Sadhana. Variety is beauty of creation.
Mind is nothing but a collection of Smskaras. It is nothing but a bundle of habits. It is nothing but a collection of desires arising from contact with different objects. It is also a collection of feelings aroused by worldly botherations. The world is the best teacher or Guru.
Sensation, thought and volition are the threefold functions of the mind. Cognition , desire, voition are the three mental processes. Mind has three states, vi., active, passive and neutral. Mind always wants variety and new sensations. It is disgusted with monotony.
Speed reading
Speed reading page23
the def of reading
1. Recognition: reader;s knowledge of the alphabetic symbols
2. Assimilation: the physical process of perception and scanning
3. Intra - integration: basic understanding derived from the reading material itself awith minimum dependence on past experience, other than knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.
4. Extra - integration: analysis, criticism, appreciation, selection and rejection.
5. Retention: this is the capacity to store the information in memory.
6. Recall: the ability to recover the information from memory storage
7. communication: this represents teh application of the information and may be further broken down into at least 4 categories, which are:
* written communication
* spoken communication
* communication through drawing and the manipulation of objects
* thinking, which is another word for communication with the self;
Preliminary Exercise
Subvocalisation & the Thought- Stream
Generally speaking, subcvocalisation is unnecessary to the adult reader, except perhaps when reading poetry.
A thought-stream is essential for full understanding.
STEP1.
STEP2. count out loud from one to ten repeatedly, whilst reading the page silentl using thought stream. Counting out loud will occupy the motor system so that the mind is unable to subvocalise.
STEP3.
....
C- Speed perception ; pacing ; scanning;
The prince
The Prince page 62 chapter 24
Such as they are, its ethics are those of Machiavellu's contem[oraries; year they cannot be sai to be out of date so long as teh governments of Euarope rely on material rather thatn on moral forces.
The Prince is bestrewn with truths that can be proved at every turn.
IN politics there are no perfectly safe courses; prudence consists in choosing the least dangerous ones.
From whose conduct and fate he drew the moral that it is far better to earn the confidence of the people than to rely on fortresses. Yet in "the prince" the duke is in point of fact cited as a type of the man who rises on the fortune of others, and falls with them; who takes every course that might be expected from a prudent man but the course which will save him; who is prepared for all eventualotoes but the one which happens; and who, when all his anilities fail to carry him through exclains taht it was not his fault but an extraordinary and unforseen fatality.
Its problems are still debatable and interesting, because they are the eternal problems between the ruled and their rulers.
The prince with more than a merely artistic or historucal interest is the incovtrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which still guide nations and rulers in their relationship with each other and their neighbours.
So to understand the nature of the people it needs to be a prince and to uinderstant dthat if princes it needs to be of the people.
He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neighter their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality.
... to make himself hte head and defender of his less powerful neighbours and to weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get a footing there; for it will always happen tha tsuch a one will be introduced by those who are discontented, either through excess of ambition or through fear as on ehas seen already.
This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any ediface: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acruiting, he had but little in keeping.
Page 30. Para 2.
FOr this reason many consider that a wise prince, when he has the opportunity, ought with craft to foster some animosity against himself, so that, having crushed it, his renown may rise highher.
I must not fail to warn a prince, who by menas of secret favours has acquired a new state, that he must well consider the reasons which induced those to favour him who did so; and if it be not a natural affection towards him, but only discontent with their government, then he will only keep them friendly with great trouble and difficulty, for it will be impossible to satisfy them.
But to enable a prince to form an opinion of his sevatn there is one test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, sucj a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince, and never pay any attention to matters in which the prince is not concerned.
Dam against flood. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she tuwns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her.
All this marises from nothing else than wherther or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times.
The picture of Doryan Grey
page139 end {{ Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes" ;;;; What is a cynic? A man who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. "}} {{ When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself}}
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal
the artist is art's aim. No artist tries to prove anything. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse
than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys
the harmony of any face.
It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who,
on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil.
Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one
believes it oneself.
"Dorian Gray" is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him.
I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than
when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said,
of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines,
in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. "That is all."
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love:
it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of jeeoing our place.
There is no such thing as a good influenjce, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral form the scientific point of view."
"Why>"
"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natureal thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. HE becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowdays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, whichis the basis of morals the terror of God which is the secret of religion-- these are the two things that govern us. And yet--"
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its mostrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were? How clear, and vivd, and cruel! One could not esceape from htem.
You are quite right to do that" he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul but the sense, just as nothing can cure the sense but the soul."
Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.
... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thouht is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. The true mystery of the world is the visible, nothe invisible.
Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.
Live! LIve the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations! Be afraid of nothing...
Only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passionis that the caprice lasts a little longer."
The scarlet would pass away form his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, adn uncouth.
Young men want to be faithful,and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot; that is all one can say."
Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To tes reality we must see it on hte tight rope. When the verities become actobats, we can judge them.
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Never marry at all, DOrian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
"SEARCH FOR BEAUTY BEING THE REAL SECRET OF LIFE."
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect-- simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passionfor property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might puck them up.
"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought. "
From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine.
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of theart of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.
Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought?
She was free in her prison of passion!!
Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.
To be good is to be in harmony with one's self.
If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, whe is worthy of all your adoration, wortthy of the adoration of the world.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating-- people who know absolutely everything , adn people who know absolutely nothing.
When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not hte priest, that gives us absolution.
They make one believe in thereality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love.
Ethernal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins-- he was to have all these things.
Perhaps one should never put one's worhip into words.
Things that he had dimlly dreamt of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradualy revealed.
The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy.
It was to have its sevice of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not hte fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.
BUt it was teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itslef but a moment.
He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.
There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain , seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will.
In the common world of fact the wicjked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
Knowledge would be fatal. It is hte uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
The world as I see
In times of crises people are generally blind to everything outside their immediate necessities.
A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.
He has only been his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Enouth for me the mystery of the erernity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
I most seriously believe that one does people the best sevice by giving them some elecating work to do and thus indirectly elevating them.
The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so muck in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave.
Besides, one always cuts a poor figure if one complains about others who are struggling for their place in teh sun too after their own fashion.
All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thuis do we mortals achieve immortality in hte permanent things which we create in common.
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religous basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death.
Only one who has devoted his life to similar can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man strength of this sort. A contemporaru has said, not unjustly, tha tin this materialistic age of ours the sertious scientific workers are the only progoundly religious people.
Thomas Sir More
Why should pain and suffering be allowed to exist? He asks, then answers -- " The sun shines on good and bad. God often gives evil people good fortune just in order to call tehm by kindness to him. Then, if this does not succeed, HE gives them sorrow. Sometimes those in prosperity cannot creep to GOD, while in tribulation they run forward to him apace."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Walter Kaufman
Faith in God is dead as a matter of cultural fact, and any meaning of life in the sense of supernatural purpose is gone. Now it is up to man to give his life meaning by raisin himself above teh animals and the all-too-human. Our so-called human nature is precisely what we should do well to overcome; and the man who has overcome it Zarathustra calls the overman.
Nietzsche wants no believers but like Socrates, aims to help others to find themselves adn surpass him.
And if you cannot be saints of knowledge,a t least be its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such sainthood. Let your work be struggle. Let your peace be a victory. Not your pity but your courage far saved the unfortunate. page 47
Verily man gave themselves all their good and evil. Veruly they did not take it they did not find it not did it come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself- he alone created a meaning for things a human meaning. Therefore he calls himself "man" which means: teh esteemer. page59
Thus speaks the fool: " Association with other people corrupts one's character - especially one has none. "
Today you are still suffering form the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry out " I am alone" The time will no longer be in sight and that which seems low will be all too near; even what seems sublim to you will frighten you like a ghost. And you will cry out " All is false",
A little revenge is more human than no revenge.
Remain faithful to the earth my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift giving love and knowledge serve the meaning of earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against erenal walls. page 76
God is conjecture; but I desire that your conjecture should be limited by what is thinkable. Could you think a GOD? But this is waht the will to truth should mean to you: that eveything be cahnged into twhat is thinkable for man visible for man, feeble by man. You should think through your own senses to their consequences. And what you have called worl, that shall be created only by you: your reason, your image, your will, your love shall thus be realized. page86
Whatever in me has feeling, suffers and is in proson but my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and liberty.
And if a friend does you evil then say: " I forgive you what you did to me; but that you have done it to yourself - how could I forgive that?" Thus speaks all great love; it overcomes even forgiveness adn pity.
And now are you angry with me because I teach that there is no reward and paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward. Alas, that is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things and now also into the foundation of your souls, you are virtuous. page 94
Alas, I often frew weary of the spirit when I found that even the rabble had spirit.
I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality. For, to me justice speaks thus:" Men are not equal." Nor shall they become equal. What would my love of the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
The struggle and inequality are present even in beauty, and also war for power and more power: that is what he teaches us here in the plainest parable. page 101
Like the sail, trembling with the voilence of the spirit, my wisdom goes over the sea- my wild wisdom.
Lord of the rings
The hobbit : Page38
Fellowship of the Rings
All wehave to decide is hwat to do with the time that is given, us.
because he began his ownership of the ____ so. With Pity.
All that is gold does not glidder,
NOt all those who wander are lost;
He bitterluy regretted his foolishness, and reproached himself for weakness of will; for he now perceived that in putting on the Ring he obeyed not his own desire but the commanding wish of his enemies.
The future good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present.
One good turn deserves another.
NO need to brood on what tomorrow may bring;
What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant
-Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.
-But it is more nearly possible for a public to enlighten itself: this is even inescapable if only the public is given its freedom. For there will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself
-All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters.
-he pastor: Don't argue, believe! (Only a single lord in the world says: Argue, as much as you want to and about what you please, but obey!
Your personality and YOU (Sarah Splaver)
The brain is tangible. It consists of masses of nerve tissues, the vast bulk of which is housef within the skiull. The mind however is intangible. THe mind is made up all your mental processes - your thoughts, your reasoning your imagination your feelings your attitudes your memories your dreams your preceptions your motivations and all of your other varied mental activities and all of your controls which you consciously or unconsciously exerciese over these mental processes.
It is most important that you establish the habit of going steady with study.
Learning requires effort. Regular periodic.
Leartning requires reinforcement. To learn to acquire knowledge to remember we must stenghten these synaptic connections. This strength comes from reinforcement through regular study sessions.
Lasting learning, the kind of learning which will saty with you for many years is the result of proper periodic studying.
School is learning not just for the taking and passing of tests.
Planning is foundation of proper study habits.
There are number of diffeerent mental abilities. Of special concern to you for educational and career planning purposes are the six primary mental abilities.
1. verbal comprehension ability: is the power to grasp teh meaning of what you hear and what you read
2. word fluency ability : if you are superior word fluency ability you are able to express yourself readily and skillfully in writing and speaking.
3. spacial ability: is the capacity to see an object in all of its dimensions some people are able to look at teh drawing of a structure and visualize it in all of its height depth and breath.
4. numerical ability: working with numbers.
5. reasoning ability:is facility which enables you to delve into problems and solve them logically.
6. memory :
EVERY CHILD NEEDS TO FEEL THAT HE IS LOVED.
Although they react to teh love which is bestowedd upon them with joy laughter ahugs kisses and otehr indicidual responses, they must develop and griw before they inwardly feel the emotion of love toward trhose who love them. Thus the child develops from being a RECIEVER OF LOVER, one who needs very mich to be loved, to a GIVER OF LOVE, one who creats love within himself and can give this love to his mother and father.
In OTHELLO, Shakespeare refers to jealosy as "the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on". Bottling up your emotions within you however can be a great threat and very damaging to your health. As emotional pressure rise if they are not released in awholesome fashion they may bring on a dangerious outburst or an emotional explosion injurious to teh person himself and often too to innocent victims in his environment.
Escape MECHANISMS.
- POSTPHONEMENT
- FANTASY is an imaginary state wherein all desires are delicered and all distresses disappear. Daydreaming is popular form of fantasy. (excessive daydraming is bad) It becomes detrimental when daydreamer receives so much pleasure from imaginary events taht these replace the need for real accomplishments and real action.
- etc
"God gives me the serenity to accept the things O cannot change
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."
The "why's"' of white lies
The white lie, in a way is a type of tactful talk diplomatically designed to soothe the feelings of the person at whom it is directed. Whereas slander accuses and abuses the while lie eases and appeases.
Success is one of the most misused words in the English language. Success is self-fulfillment. What is sefl-fulfillment? It is that inner glow, that personal gratification, which comes to you when you know that you have done somehting well and that what you have done has seved a useful purpose.
Essentially education is search for TRUTH, the search for knowledge to enable us to live better and fuller lives. "Veritas" the latin word for "truth" is firmly entrenched in teh mottoes of colleges and universities throughout the nation.
Mein Kampf by A.Hitler
Mein Kampf
-When I look back over so many years and try to judge the results of that experience I find two very significant facts standing out clearly before my mind.
-To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events.
-World history became more and more an inexhaustible source for the understanding of contemporary historical events, which means politics. Therefore I will not "learn" politics but let politics teach me.
And a meagre morsel indeed it was, not even sufficient to still the hunger which I constantly felt. That hunger was the faithful guardian which never left me but took part in everything I did.
-In the case of such a person the hard struggle through which he passes often destroys his normal human sympathy.His own fight for existence kills his sensibility for the misery of those who have been left behind.
-The man who has never been in the clutches of that crushing viper can never know what its poison is.
-I have had actual experience of all this in hundreds of cases. At first I was disgusted and indignant; but later on I came to recognize the whole tragedy of their misfortune and to understand the profound causes of it. They were the unhappy victims of evil circumstances.
- Even in those days I already saw that there was a two-fold method by which alone it would be possible to bring about an amelioration of these conditions. This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved.
-Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation - which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred - and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development.
- I can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect a thing I must at least have some knowledge of it
- He believes that he has acquired knowledge, whereas the truth is that every increase in such ‘knowledge’ draws him more and more away from real life, until he finally ends up in some sanatorium or takes to politics and becomes a parliamentary deputy.
Such a person never succeeds in turning his knowledge to practical account when the opportune moment arrives; for his mental equipment is not ordered with a view to meeting the demands of everyday life.
- For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health.
- so that it was at that time possible to persuade the masses that this ridiculous measure in which the most sacred claims of the working-classes were being granted represented a diabolical plan to weaken their fighting power in this easy way and, if possible, to paralyse it. One will not be astonished at the success of these allegations if one remembers what a small measure of thinking power the broad masses possess.
- A time came when I no longer passed blindly along the street of the mighty city, as I had done in the early days, but now with my eyes open not only to study the buildings but also the human beings.
- Generally speaking a man should not publicly take part in politics before he has reached the age of thirty, though, of course, exceptions must be made in the case of those who are naturally gifted with extraordinary political abilities.
- A man must first acquire a fund of general ideas and fit them together so as to form an organic structure of personal thought or outlook on life - a Weltanschhauung.
- If these pre-requisite conditions are not fulfilled, and if a man should enter political life without this equipment, he will run a twofold risk. In the first place, he may find during the course of events that the stand which he originally took in regard to some essential question was wrong. He will now have to abandon his former position or else stick to it against his better knowledge and riper wisdom and after his reason and convictions have already proved it untenable.
-I shall subsequently deal more fully with the problem to which this kind of parliamentary vermin give rise.
When a man has reached his thirtieth year he has still a great deal to learn. That is obvious. But henceforward what he learns will principally be an amplification of his basic ideas; it will be fitted in with them organically so as to fill up the framework of the fundamental Weltanschhauung which he already possesses. What he learns anew will not imply the abandonment of principles already held, but rather a deeper knowledge of those principles. And thus his colleagues will never have the discomforting feeling that they have been hitherto falsely led by him.
- His successors had neither the ability nor the will-power necessary for the task they had to face.
- The setting up of a representative parliamentary body, without insisting on the preliminary that only one language should be used in all public intercourse under the State, was the first great blow to the predominance of the German element in the Dual Monarchy.
- The danger which exists in these slumbering separatist instincts can be rendered more or less innocuous only through centuries of common education, common traditions and common interests.
- By far the most effective branch of political education, which in this connection is best expressed by the word ‘propaganda’, is carried on by the Press. The Press is the chief means employed in the process of political ‘enlightenment’. It represents a kind of school for adults. This educational activity, however, is not in the hands of the State but in the clutches of powers which are partly of a very inferior character. While still a young man in Vienna I had excellent opportunities for coming to know the men who owned this machine for mass instruction, as well as those who supplied it with the ideas it distributed.
- As a contrast to this kind of democracy we have the German democracy, which is a true democracy; for here the leader is freely chosen and is obliged to accept full responsibility for all his actions and omissions. The problems to be dealt with are not put to the vote of the majority; but they are decided upon by the individual, and as a guarantee of responsibility for those decisions he pledges all he has in the world and even his life.
- If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purpose of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right but also the duty of every individual citizen.
The question of whether and when such a situation exists cannot be answered by theoretical dissertations but only by the exercise of force, and it is success that decides the issue.
- Generally speaking, we must not forget that the highest aim of human existence is not the maintenance of a State of Government but rather the conservation of the race.
- He had a rare gift of insight into human nature and he was very careful not to take men as something better than they were in reality. He based his plans on the practical possibilities which human life offered him, whereas Schönerer had only little discrimination in that respect. All ideas that this Pan-German had were right in the abstract, but he did not have the forcefulness or understanding necessary to put his ideas across to the broad masses. He was not able to formulate them so that they could be easily grasped by the masses, whose powers of comprehension are limited and will always remain so. Therefore all Schönerer’s knowledge was only the wisdom of a prophet and he never could succeed in having it put into practice.
- This lack of insight into human nature led him to form a wrong estimate of the forces behind certain movements and the inherent strength of old institutions.
- In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schönerer. His profound knowledge of human nature enabled him to form a correct estimate of the various social forces and it saved him from under-rating the power of existing institutions. And it was perhaps this very quality which enabled him to utilize those institutions as a means to serve the purposes of his policy.
He saw only too clearly that, in our epoch, the political fighting power of the upper classes is quite insignificant and not at all capable of fighting for a great new movement until the triumph of that movement be secured. Thus he devoted the greatest part of his political activity to the task of winning over those sections of the population whose existence was in danger and fostering the militant spirit in them rather than attempting to paralyse it. He was also quick to adopt all available means for winning the support of long-established institutions, so as to be able to derive the greatest possible advantage for his movement from those old sources of power.
-. His extremely wise attitude towards the Catholic Church rapidly won over the younger clergy in such large numbers that the old Clerical Party was forced to retire from the field of action or else, which was the wiser course, join the new Party, in the hope of gradually winning back one position after another.
- A man who fights only for his own existence has not much left over for the service of the community.
- Mass meetings in public became more and more rare, though these are the only means of exercising a really effective influence on the people; because here the influence comes from direct personal contact and in this way the support of large sections of the people can be obtained.
- The wrong impression created by the Press was no longer corrected by personal contact with the people through public meetings, whereby the individual representatives might have given a true account of their activities.
- The task of the pen must always be that of presenting the theoretical concepts which motivate such changes. The force which has ever and always set in motion great historical avalanches of religious and political movements is the magic power of the spoken word.
- The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of glowing passion; but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others. It is only through the capacity for passionate feeling that chosen leaders can wield the power of the word which, like hammer blows, will open the door to the hearts of the people.
- To a political leader the religious teachings and practices of his people should be sacred and inviolable.
-If the leaders had known that, for psychological reasons alone, it is not expedient to place two or more sets of adversaries before the masses - since that leads to a complete splitting up of their fighting strength - they would have concentrated the full and undivided force of their attack against a single adversary.
-But even though there is much that can really be said against the various religious denominations, political leaders must not forget that the experience of history teaches us that no purely political party in similar circumstances ever succeeded in bringing about a religious reformation.
- It was nationalist, but unfortunately it paid too little heed to the social problem, and thus it failed to gain the support of the masses.
- The Christian-Socialists grasped the significance of the social question; but they adopted the wrong principles in their struggle against Jewry, and they utterly failed to appreciate the value of the national idea as a source of political energy.
- The crimes which the House of Habsburg committed against Italian freedom and independence during several centuries were too grave to be forgiven, even with the best of goodwill.
- Nature must now step in once more and select those who are to survive, or else man will help himself by artificially preventing his own increase, with all the fatal consequences for the race and the species which have been already mentioned. (darvinism, he strongly supports “survival” concept since he thinks that it will challenge the nature of the race and make the race even more stronger. I mean nature makes it, nature…)
-internal colonization theory
-Therefore the only possibility which Germany had of carrying a sound territorial policy into effect was that of acquiring new territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose as long as they are not suited for settlement by Europeans on a large scale. In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle.
-If we consider the question of what those forces actually are which are necessary to the creation and preservation of a State, we shall find that they are: The capacity and readiness to sacrifice the individual to the common welfare. That these qualities have nothing at all to do with economics can be proved by referring to the simple fact that man does not sacrifice himself for material interests. In other words, he will die for an ideal but not for a business
- We were fighting for our bread; but the English declared that they were fighting for ‘freedom’, and not at all for their own freedom. Oh, no, but for the freedom of the small nations.
- They never understood that as soon as man is called upon to struggle for purely material causes he will avoid death as best he can; for death and the enjoyment of the material fruits of a victory are quite incompatible concepts. The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake. And only the will to save the race and native land or the State, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.
Therefore when force is employed success is dependent on the consistent manner in which it is used. This persistence, however, is nothing less than the product of definite spiritual convictions. Every form of force that is not supported by a spiritual backing will be always indecisive and uncertain.
Mendacious fatuous
. Despite all views to the contrary, this honour does actually exist, or rather it will have to exist; for a nation without honour will sooner or later lose its freedom and independence.
-What, for example, should we say of a poster which purported to advertise some new brand of soap by insisting on the excellent qualities of the competitive brands? We should naturally shake our heads
detrimental.
- Propaganda must be limited to a few simple themes and these must be represented again and again. Here, as in innumerable other cases, perseverance is the first and most important condition of success.
Such people grow sick and tired of everything. They always long for change and will always be incapable of putting themselves in the position of picturing the wants of their less callous fellow-creatures in their immediate neighbourhood, let alone trying to understand them.
- The moment the organization and message of a propagandist movement begins to be orientated according to their tastes it becomes incoherent and scattered.
- But I was a being without a name, one among eight millions. Hence it was better for me to keep my mouth shut and do my duty as well as I could in the position to which I had been assigned.
-? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence, realizing that this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when compared with the misfortune of one’s country.
-. I spent whole days pondering on the problem of what could be done, but unfortunately every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown and therefore did not have even the first pre-requisite necessary for effective action. Later on I shall explain the reasons why I could not decide to join any of the parties then in existence.
- The attention which I had given to economic problems during my earlier years was more or less confined to considerations arising directly out of the social problem.
- The significance of a political philosopher does not depend on the practical success of the plans he lays down but rather on their absolute truth and the influence they exert on the progress of mankind. If it were otherwise, the founders of religions could not be considered as the greatest men who have ever lived, because their moral aims will never be completely or even approximately carried out in practice. Even that religion which is called the Religion of Love is really no more than a faint reflex of the will of its sublime Founder. But its significance lies in the orientation which it endeavoured to give to human civilization, and human virtue and morals.
- I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking. My voice had become so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled.
- I am able to state that my talks were successful. During the course of my lectures I have led back hundreds and even thousands of my fellow countrymen to their people and their fatherland. I ‘nationalized’ these troops and by so doing I helped to restore general discipline.
Here again I made the acquaintance of several comrades whose thought ran along the same lines as my own and who later became members of the first group out of which the new movement developed.
- The fact that I was poor and without resources could, in my opinion, be the easiest to bear. But the fact that I was utterly unknown raised a more difficult problem. I was only one of the millions which Chance allows to exist or cease to exist, whom even their next-door neighbours will not consent to know. Another difficulty arose from the fact that I had not gone through the regular school curriculum.
- For just as bodily ailments can be cured only when their origin has been diagnosed, so also political disease can be treated only when it has been diagnosed. It is obvious of course that the external symptoms of any disease can be more readily detected than its internal causes, for these symptoms strike the eye more easily.
-. It was simply and exclusively limited to the production of pure knowledge and paid little attention to the development of practical ability. Still less attention was given to the development of individual character, in so far as this is ever possible. And hardly any attention at all was paid to the development of a sense of responsibility, to strengthening the will and the powers of decision. The result of this method was to produce erudite people who had a passion for knowing everything.
- Generally, readers of the Press can be classified into three groups:
First, those who believe everything they read;
Second, those who no longer believe anything;
Third, those who critically examine what they read and form their judgments accordingly.
Numerically, the first group is by far the strongest, being composed of the broad masses of the people. Intellectually, it forms the simplest portion of the nation. It cannot be classified according to occupation but only into grades of intelligence.
-The third group is easily the smallest, being composed of real intellectuals whom natural aptitude and education have taught to think for themselves and who in all things try to form their own judgments, while at the same time carefully sifting what they read.
-. That is one of the results of our defective education, which turns the youth away from the instinctive dictates of Nature, pumps into them a certain amount of knowledge without however being able to bring them to what is the supreme act of knowing. To this end diligence and goodwill are of no avail, if innate understanding fail. This final knowledge at which man must aim is the understanding of causes which are instinctively perceived.
In the case of the man there is the additional fact that he frequently is unfortunate enough to run up against this danger when he is under the influence of alcohol.
. Prostitution, therefore, can only be really seriously tackled if, by means of a radical social reform, early marriage is made easier than hitherto. This is the first preliminary necessity for the solution of this problem.
Our system of education entirely loses sight of the fact that in the long run a healthy mind can exist only in a healthy body. This statement, with few exceptions, applies particularly to the broad masses of the nation.
But if religious teaching and religious faith were once accepted by the broad masses as active forces in their lives, then the absolute authority of the doctrines of faith would be the foundation of all practical effort. There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so. But the greatest damage of all has come from the practice of debasing religion as a means that can be exploited to serve political interests, or rather commercial interests. The impudent and loud-mouthed liars who do this make their profession of faith before the whole world in stentorian tones so that all poor mortals may hear - not that they are ready to die for it if necessary but rather that they may live all the better. They are ready to sell their faith for any political quid pro quo.
The average man or woman could not have felt a wave of enthusiasm surging within the breast when, for example, at the turn of the century, a princess in uniform and on horseback had the soldiers file past her on parade. Those high circles had apparently no idea of the impression which such a parade made on the minds of ordinary people; else such unfortunate occurrences would not have taken place. The sentimental humanitarianism - not always very sincere - which was professed in those high circles was often more repulsive than attractive. When, for instance, the Princess X condescended to taste the products of a soup kitchen and found them excellent, as usual, such a gesture might have made an excellent impression in times long past, but on this occasion it had the opposite effect to what was intended.
??? The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed. It would be impossible to find a fox which has a kindly and protective disposition towards geese, just as no cat exists which has a friendly disposition towards mice.????
--He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.
Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that is how the matter really stands.
--Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary, etc.
This mental attitude, which forces self-interest to recede into the background in favour of the common weal, is the first prerequisite for any kind of really human civilization.
--Posterity will not remember those who pursued only their own individual interests, but it will praise those heroes who renounced their own happiness.
It is always more difficult to fight successfully against Faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them to action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude, but a determined will, backed up by force, when necessary.
(4) The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the positive struggle for their own aims but are also determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them.
--The thing that matters here is not the vision of the man of genius who created the great idea but rather the success which his apostles achieve in shaping the expression of this idea so as to bring it home to the minds of the masses.
-- Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.
-- The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for leadership. For the leader must have the other necessary qualities. Among these qualities will-power and energy must be considered as more serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent, determination and perseverance.
-- A movement can become great only if the unhampered development of its internal strength be safeguarded and steadfastly augmented, until victory over all its competitors be secured.
The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for leadership. For the leader must have the other necessary qualities. Among these qualities will-power and energy must be considered as more serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent, determination and perseverance.
. A business man who has been in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined it through his mismanagement is not the kind of person one would recommend for the founding of a new firm.
Because this concept is so indefinite from the practical viewpoint, it gives rise to various interpretations and thus people can appeal to it all the more easily as a sort of personal recommendation. Whenever such a vague concept, which is subject to so many interpretations, is admitted into a political movement it tends to break up the disciplined solidarity of the fighting forces. No such solidarity can be maintained if each individual member be allowed to define for himself what he believes and what he is willing to do.
He was like one of the ascetic characters of the classical era and was at the same time that kind of straightforward German for whom the saying ‘Better dead than a slave’ is not an empty phrase but a veritable heart’s cry.
The völkisch belief holds that humanity must have its ideals, because ideals are a necessary condition of human existence itself.
The list of some books I remember of reading between 2003 and 2004:
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
Veronika decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho
By the river Piedra I sat down and wept, by Paulo Coelho
Fifth mountain, by Paulo Coelho
The Valkyries, by Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho
James Joyce-n The portrait of an artist as a young man
The sun also rises by Ernst Hemingway
Faust by Goethe
Ethic for the new Millennium by Dalai Lama (His holiness)
1984 by George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein
Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Stephen King, Night Shift (Collection)
Steven Hawking, Brief history of time
Thomas More, Utopia
Tao Te ching, Lao Tzu
The Limits of Sceince by Peter Medawar
Oscar Wild, The picture of Dorien GRey
Dalai Lama book
Critique of pure reason, Kant (aborted half way throuhg)
Is Islamic threat myth of reality, Esposito
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzche (took me a month to read it)
Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeere
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
Metamorphesis, Franz Kafka
The Prince, Machivelli
One hundred years of solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Ballad of reading gaol, Oscar Wilde
Your personality and you by Sarah Splaver
Foreign affairs Fareed Zakaria
Culture is hot. By culture I dont mean Wagner and Abstract Expresionnism - they have always been hot - but rather culture as an explanation for social phnomena. ... Cultural explanations persist because intellectuals like them. They make valuable the detailed knowledge of countries histories, which intellectuals have in great supply. They add an air of mystery and complexity to the study of societies.... But culture itself can be shaped and changed. Behind so many cultural attitudes, tastes, and preferences lie the political and economic forces that shaped them.
George Orwell 1984
Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records toldthe same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' Andyet the past, It was true that therewas no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of printand a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. He knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.'
-Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, incontradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.
- Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.
- With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows. -He knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it.
They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you've beaten them.'
- In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.
-It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The
first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual.
Oscar Wilde, Ballad of reading gaol
OF HEAVEN OR HELL I HAVE NO THOUGHT OR FEAR,
SEEING I KNOW NO OTHER GOD BUT THEE;
Look heaven-ward! shall God allow this thing?
Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down,
and smite the spoiler with the sword of pain.
The cycles of revolving years
May free my heart from all its fears
And teach my lips a song to sing
Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Sing on ! sing on! I woudl be drunk wihtlife.
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!
the little white clouds are racing over hte sky,
and the fields are strewn with the gold of hte flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue
A cooling wind crept form the land of snows,
nad hte warm south with tender tears of dew
It never feels decay but gathers life
From the pure sunlight and hte supreme air,
We live beneath Time's wasting sovereignty.
It is the child of all eternity.
The kingfisher flies like an arrow , and wounds the air.
Book on Chaos
Chaos may cause uncertainty but it also creates the opportunities that create hope and change
But one of the central concepts of chaos theory is that while it is impossible to exactly predict the state of a system, it is generally quite possible, even easy, to model the overall behavior of a system.
Chaos theory predicts that complex nonlinear systems are inherently unpredictable--but, at the same time, chaos theory also insures that often, the way to express such an unpredictable system lies not in exact equations, but in representations of the behavior of a system--in plots of strange attractors or in fractals.
Instead of looking for strict equations conforming to statistical data, we can now look for dynamic systems with behavior similar in nature to the statistical data--systems, that is, with similar attractors. Chaos theory provides a sound framework with which to develop scientific knowledge.
And of course, chaos theory gives people a wonderfully interesting way to become more interested in mathematics, one of the more unpopular pursuits of the day.
Chaos theory models how the world works, from weather patterns, to stock market shifts, to art, to brain patterns, to social structures, to something as seemingly non-scientific as interpersonal relationships themselves.
Though the world is infinitely complicated, there appear to be spooky patterns that exist within the world.
Fractals {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
While chaos theory attempts to explain how dynamical systems change over time (and why they change over time), fractal geometry deals with the actual images that these dynamical systems produce.Why should systems that are so dynamically complex and chaotic possess this self-similarity? This self-similarity is often explained in terms of holism, an interpretation of the geometry in terms of parts. In his book Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos, science writer, John Briggs explains the holistic phenomenon in terms of the weather,
Each time the iteration is conducted, more lines to the figure are introduced, and thus the total perimeter of the figure is lengthened. However, the area of the Koch curve is never greater than a semi-circle drawn around the curve itself. Thus, what results is a figure with an infinite perimeter that has a bounded area. By thinking in terms of two or three dimensions, this poses a clear problem. How can something have an infinite perimeter yet a finite area?
The idea that there is a way to model seemingly unpredictable processes, and that this process holds both beautiful and definite structures, points to the conclusion that there might be a greater "force" governing the behavior of the universe.}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
However, the reason that humans are able to see the past but not the future is because they are positioned the wrong way; humans can only look backwards. Perhaps someone else, existing outside of time, sitting on a bench looking at the mountain range could see time in its entirety. Even with the puzzling implications of quantum chaos, there is no reason to believe that the future is not just as fixed as the past until a better conception of time is understood.To offer some conciliation however, even if all events in the universe (both “past” and “future”) are already known by an observer outside of time, this still does not imply that they are caused. Just think about the doctor who advises his smoking patient. The doctor knows that with the patient’s weak lungs, if he does not quite smoking he will soon develop lung cancer. This does not mean that the doctor causes the cancer however. The doctor can foresee a future event, but he does not cause that future event. Similarly, it is not entirely accurate to say that just because the future may be already known by an observer that exists outside of time that free will must be abandoned.
Mandelbrot eventually obtained all of the available data on cotton prices, dating back to 1900. When he analyzed the data with IBM's computers, he noticed an astonishing fact: The numbers that produced aberrations from the point of view of normal distribution produced symmetry from the point of view of scaling. Each particular price change was random and unpredictable. But the sequence of changes was independent on scale: curves for daily price changes and monthly price changes matched perfectly. Incredibly, analyzed Mandelbrot's way, the degree of variation had remained constant over a tumultuous sixty-year period that saw two World Wars and a depression.
Later, a scientist by the name of Feigenbaum was looking at the bifurcation diagram again. He was looking at how fast the bifurcations come. He discovered that they come at a constant rate. He calculated it as 4.669. In other words, he discovered the exact scale at which it was self-similar. Make the diagram 4.669 times smaller, and it looks like the next region of bifurcations. He decided to look at other equations to see if it was possible to determine a scaling factor for them as well. Much to his surprise, the scaling factor was exactly the same. Not only was this complicated equation displaying regularity, the regularity was exactly the same as a much simpler equation. He tried many other functions, and they all produced the same scaling factor, 4.669.
Crime and punishment
think this is only the flower and the real fruit is to come.
Shall not one little crime be effaced and atoned for by a thousand good deeds?
An extraodinary ma n has a right not officially but understood but from and by his very indivisuality to permit his consience to overstep certain bounds only so far as the realisation on one of his ideas may require it.
They did not know that a new life is not given for nothing; that it has to be paid dearly for and only acquired by muich parience and suffering and great future thoughts.
Critique of pure reason
At the same time, this indifference , which has arisen in the wolr of science, and which relates to that kind of knowledge which we should wish to see destroyed the last, is a phenomenon that well deserves our attention and reflection. It is plainly no th eeffect of the levity, but of the matured judgement of the age which refuses to be any longer entertained with illusory knowledge, It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks-- that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, no in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than the critical investigation of pure reason.
... it is my task to answer the question how far reason can go, without the material presented and the aid furnished by experience.
... he other considers the pure understanding itself, its possibility and its powers of cognition-- that is, form a sujective point of view; and, although this exposition is of great importance, it does not belong essentially to th emain purpose of the work, because the grand question is what and how much can reason and understanding, apart from experience, cognize, and not, how is the faulty of thought itself possible?
... We do not enlarge but disfifure the sciences when we lose sight of their respective limits and allow them to run into one another.
... they learnt that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follwo, as it were, in the leading strings of nature, but must proceed in advance with principles of judgement according to unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply its questions.
... Or, if the path has only hitherto been missed, what indications do we possess to guide us in a renewed investigation, and to enable us to hope for greater success that has fallen to the lot of our predecessors?
(Disorder versus order in brain function)
Determinism
Laplaceean view of determinism.
An intellifence knowing all the forces acting in the nature art a given instant as well as the momentary positions of all things int eh universe would bne able to comprehend in one single formula athe motions of the largest bodies as well as a lightest atoms in the world provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain the future mas wella s the past would be present to its eyes. (Laplace 1820)
Chapter 9. (Brain creates macroscopic order from microscopic disorder by neuro-dynamics in perception)
Conclusion
The essential difference between the theories for passive versus active perception comes down to the source of the order created from disorder. In the passive view, the order is derived from a postulated “object” that exists outside the brain, so the form that is constructed within the brain is called “representation” of the object. In the active vie, the form that results from exploratory action into the world outside is constructed inside the brain by a learning process of generalization. The construct embodies the meaning of an experience with an “object”, so it can not be said to represent the object. The reason that brain must work this way is that the world is infinitely complex, whereas brains are finite state systems. The “objects” that occupy the world shared by all observers are different for every observer, and the delineation of each object on every presentation is never quite the same. (that is the reason of failure to artificial intelligence)
Noise is essential for maintaining the health of neurons and it provides the unstructures pre and post synaptic co-activity that is required to form new attractors with Hebbian learning instead of merely reinforcing existing attractors.
Chapter 11. (Conciousness, schemata and language)
Divine comedy
First: Virtues pagans
Second: Wanton-- last
Third: Gluttonous
Fourth: avaricious(greed)
Fifth: irascible (characterized by anger)
Sixth: heresiarch
Seventh: violent
You citizens were wont to call me Ciacco;
For the pernicious sin of gluttony
I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain.
Distributing the light in equal measure;
He in like manner to the mundane splendours
Ordained a general ministress and guide,
That she might change at times the empty treasures
From race to race, from one blood to another,
Beyond resistance of all human wisdom.
More than a thousand at the gates I saw
Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily
Were saying, "Who is this that without death
Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?"
And my sagacious Master made a sign
Of wishing secretly to speak with them.
O ye who have undistempered intellects,
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses!
Kurl Hahn - Harrogate speech
Originality
Shortly before he died Prince Max lead an enthusiastic America friend around his Salem schools. The friend asked, "What are you proudest of in your beautiful schools?" Prince Max answered, "I am proudest of the fact that there is nothing original in the,; it is stolen from everywhere, from teh Boy Scouts, the British Public Schools, from Plato, from Goethe." Then the American said. "But oughtn't you aim at being original?" Prince Max answered, " In medicine as in education, you must harvest the wisdom of thousand years. IF you ever come across a surgeon who wants to take out your appendix in the most original manner possible, I strongly advise you to go to another surgeon."
May I ebgin by quoting what Charles Dickens has said in Great Expectations:
"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this and think for a moment of the long chain of iron and gold, of thorns or flowers that would never have bound you but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day."
I dont blame the youngsters, I blame the adult world and I also blame those schools which do not accept a remedial responsibility, in other words, which fail to introduce into the timetable health - giving activities designed to develop certain tastes and distastes. I am referring to emotional habits likely to make the young resistant to the insidious influences to which tehy are inevitably exposed.
Faith in human nature is viatl element in this humanity.
In a democratic society you can only accelerate develop,ents by example.
He who drills and labours, accepts hardship, boredom and dangers, all for the sake of helping his brother in peril and distress discovers GOd's purpose in his inner life.
"Hiroshima Nagasaki: apictorial record of the atomic destruction"
HIroshima
OUt of those blue skies come hte two most powertfil weapoms of mass destruction yet devised, the first two atomic bombs used in war the first at 8:15 am on August the 6th on Hiroshima, cored with uranium; the second, of plutonium, on Nagasiki at11:02 am on august the 9th. 130,00-140,000 people die instantly in Hiroshima and anotehr 60,000 - 70,000 in Nagasaki.
hibakusha -- bomb affected survivors
OH my GOODNESS!!!
Aim: It is published in the hope that people all over the world, especially younger generation will realize what is the meaning of the damage and after effects of the atomic bombing and the lingering suffering of the hibakusha. (HSI)
History of psycoanalysis
It was proved that psychoanalysis could not clear up anything actual. except by going back to something in the past.
It may, therefore, be said that the psychoanalytic theory endeavors to explain two experiences, which result in a striking and unexpected manner during the attempt to trace back the morbid symptoms of a neurotic to their source in his life-history; viz., the facts of transference and of resistance.
Interpretation of dreams
Interpretation of Dreams (Sigmund Freud) page 47
Dream converts the slight sensations perceived in sleep into intense sensations, which led him to conclude that dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of an incipient physical change which escaped observation during the day.
Symbolic dream interpretation - envisages the dream-content as a whole and seeks to replace it by another content which is intelligible and in certain respects analogous.
"cipher method" - it treats the dream as a king of secret code in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, accordign to an established key. The essential point, then in this procedure is that the work of interpretation is not apploied to the entirety of the dream, but to each portion of the dreamcontent severally as though the dream were a conglomerate in which each fragment calls for special treatment.
- that is to say they are suppressed before they are preceived. p.10
As will be seen, the point is to induce a psychic state which is in some degree analogous, as reagards the distribution of psychic evergy (mobile attention), to teh state of the mind before falling asleep -- and also, of course, to the hypnotic state. On falling asleep the "undesired ideas" emerge owing to teh slachening of a certain arbitrary (adn, of course, also critical) action which is allowed to influence the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to speak of fatigue as the reason of this slackeningl the merging undesired ideas are changed into visual and auditory images.
p11. In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and teh ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.
p25. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. Our next purppose should be ascertain whether this is a feneral characteristic of drea,s or whether it is only the accidental content of the particular dream.
Chapter3: The dreams are also to fulfill the wishes we have for example, if we are thirsty then we dream of water etc. sexual desire also can be an example.
p34. If we call this peculiarity of dreams -- namely, that they need elucidation -- the phenomenon of distortion in dreams, a second question then arises: what is the origin of this distortion in dreams?
# During sleep one is incapable of finding an adequate expression for one's dream thoughts.
Your opinion that the dream is nonsencse probably signifies merely an inner resistance to its interpretation. Don't let yourself be put off.
Here, as before, what the dream expresses is only my wish that things might be so. It affection (which happened in his dream) does not belong to the latent content, to the thoughts behind teh dream; it stands in opposition to this content; it is calculated to conceal the knowledge conveyed by the interpretation. Probably it precisely its function. The distortion is here shown to be intentional -- it is a means of disguise.
We should then assume that in every human being there exist, as the primary cause of dream formation, two psycis forces (tendencies or systems), one of which forms the wish expressed by the dream, while otehr exercises a censorship over this dream - wish thereby enforcing on it a distortion.
They are wish dreams in so far as every dream emanates from the first instance, while the second instance behaves towards the dream only in a defensive, not in a constructive manner.
Identification is a highly important motive in the mechanism of hyterical symptoms; by thbis means patients are enabled to express in their syptoms not merely their own experiences but the experiences of quite a number of otehr people; they can suffer, as it were for a whole mass of people and fill all the parts of a drama with their won personlaities.
From my essay on the etiology of anxiety neurosis, you will see taht I note coitus interruptus as one of the factors responsible for the development of neytoruc fear.
Islam today
Preface
The Italian Prime Minister voiced what many thought inprivate “Islam was the enemy of Western civilization”
1.
Introduction: Raising Questions
Commentators are already seeing the confrontation in apocalyptic terms and calling it the last crusade.
Some western scholars of Islam talk of many Islams, a “Moroccan Islam”, an “Indian Islam” and so on. This is inaccurate and misleading. There is one Islam only.
How, then are Muslims different ? The answer is that they are not. Islam is sociology. The Prophet’s saying encourage Muslims to greet one another warmly, to avoid gossip and slander , to accept invitations to visit one another. Islam also encourages “social activity, a sense of community, a sense of belonging sense of place.
Jihad: The concept in western literature and usage has come to mean the idea of holy war, of Muslim fanaticism. In fact jihad means struggle, and there are various forms of it; physical confrontation is just one. The hole Phorophet identified the greatest jihad as the struggle to master our passions and instincts.
Islam is seen in the West as an evangelical religion, wishing to spread the message and encourage conversion. This is correct. Muslims are enthusiastic about dawah, the call to Islam.
2:
What is Islam?
AD 610 when Muhammad was 40, he heard voice of angel Gabriel. Prophet was born around 540 AD in Makkah. He married with Khadijah. He had four daughters named Zainab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kalthum and Fatimah. During the Ramadan he was meditating in Hira suddenly Angel came and asked him to read. But he could not read. Khadijah was first female Muslim and Ali was first male one.
The journey in 622 across the desert is crusial event for Muslims. It is called the hijra, which means departure. Even today, the Muslim system of dating years starts with the Prophet’s journey; AD 622 is the first year of the Muslim calendar.
Opening if the fast during Ramadan by eating a date is sunnah.
Muslims don’t allow images or representations if the prophet. The reason is rooed in the history of Islam. As Islam rejected any form of idol worship, Muslims feared that images of the Prophet would soon become objects of worship: nothing must detract from the worship of God.
The message: the holy Quran.
Japanese History period
(17 injunctions)
no significience occured until 645
1. Nara period 710- 794
2. Heian period 794- 1185
3. Kamakura period 1185- 1338
4. Muramachi period 1338- 1573 Edo-- Tokyo
5. Tokugawa period 1603- 1867
(Matthew Perry sailed into Edo bay in 1853
Meiji restoration of 1868
6. Meiji period 1868- 1912 purveyor-- someone who provides food
indispensable- absolutely neccesary
from Kurl Hahn
Victopry comes in leaps and bounds of clever adaptation, the string of successes and compromises through which one creates for oneself a place in the world.
He identified the worst declines as those in fitness, skill and care, self0 discipline, initiative and enterprise, memory and imagination and compassion. Among the unusual assumptions underlying all forms of instruction at Salem was Hahn's conviction that students should experience failure as well as success. They should learn to overcome negative inclinations within themselves and prevail against adversity. He believed, moveover, that students should learn to discipline their own needs and desires for the good of the community. They should realize, through their own experience, the connection between self-discovery and service. He also insisted that true learning required periods of silence and solitude as well as directed activity.
The goal of learning , in his view, was compensatory: to purify the destructive inclinations of the human personality, to redress the imbalances in modern ways of living, to develop each person's disabilities to their maximum potential and to place new found strength in service of those in need.
The center emerged as a discovery of who he really was inside, the gift of suddenly knowing what he had to do, and would do, when he bumped up against his own limitations. It was the scale of values, teh plan of life, the desired future he asserted as his response to adversity.
He came to see that there exosts in everyone a grand passion, an outlandish thirst for adventure, a desire to live boldly and vivdly in the journey through life.
Hahn believed that some separation from the existing human world into the inrensity of a journey -quest, confronting challenges and transforming opportunities for service, could change the balance of power in young people.
THey hoped to discover the combination of challenging experiences that might help young people discover new ways of organizing their lives and working with other people.
The problem of how to educate the whole person cannot be solved without learnign how to civilize human communities, which in turn cannot be done without preparing the entire world society in the arts of living harmoniously at the highest levels of potential activity and understanding. FInally, they engaged in sevice activities, experiencing the value of compassion through direct action on behalf of the community or specific people in need.
Through OUtward Bound, Hahn hoped to foster a deeper intensity of commitment in the rite of passage from youth to adult life. He was intent on creating more dramatic challenges and victories for the young than were available in conventianal forms of schooling.
But at its heart, in every time and place, is Hahn's own center, his conviction that it is possible, even in a relatively short tme to introduce greater balance and compassion into human lives by impelling people into iexperienes which show them they can rise above adversity adn overcome their won defeatism. They can make more of their lives than they thought tehy could and learn to serve others with their strength.
The man's center remains, beckoning like an adventure. Arise from weakness to teach about strength. Turn self-discovery inot acts of compassion. Everywhere defend human decency.
Tao Te ching
8. Great good i ssaid to be like water
sustaining life with no conscious striving
flowing naturally, providing nourishment
found even in places
which desiring man rejects
10
Maintaining unity is virtuous
for the inner world of thought is one
with the external world
of action and of things.
13 Being watchful he had no fear of dangerl
being responsive he had no need of fear.
17
it happened of its own accord
36. That which is soft and supple, may overcome the hard and strong;
38. A true good man is unaware of the good deeds he performs. Conversely a foolish man must try continuously to be good.
40. All things are born of being;
being is born of non-being;
33. Will power may bring perseverance;
but to have tranquility is to endure,
beigin protected for all his days
He whose ideas remain in the world
is present for all time.
38. He who is truly great
does notn upon the surface dwell,
but on what lies beneath.
It is said that the fruit is his concern
rather than the flower.
43. .. The wise man understands full well,
that wordless teaching can take place,
and that actions should occur
without the wish for self-advancement.
53. When the court has adornments in profusion
the fields are full of weeds
and the granaries are bare
55. From constancy, there develops harmony,
and from harmony, enlightenment.
Leap of faith
To the school's credit, uit offered a community service program tutoring non english speaking students in apublic school in Harlem and I volunteered to serve. Initially I was frustrated by my inability to make any meaningful progress with the stedsents many of whom had setious learning disabilities and needed far more support than I or anyone available to them would ever be able to provide. I eventually made some headway but the most important lesson I took away fromt eh experience was just how difficult it is to break the vicious cycle of ignorance and poverty.
One of the goals of the "White revolition" the Shah had advanced in 1963 was ambitious land reform that would redistribute the vast holdings of the rich few to the many rural poor. The Shah had also chjapioned women's rights.
It was not until I started working and living in Jordan that I befan to understand the enormity of this human tragedy.
Mind and mysteries
Mind and matter are two aspects as subject and object of one and the same all-full Brahman, who is neither and yet includes both. Mind precedes matter. This is Vedantic theory. Matter precedes mind. This is scientific theory. A Raja Yogi penetrates through different layers of mind by intense Sadhana. Variety is beauty of creation.
Mind is nothing but a collection of Smskaras. It is nothing but a bundle of habits. It is nothing but a collection of desires arising from contact with different objects. It is also a collection of feelings aroused by worldly botherations. The world is the best teacher or Guru.
Sensation, thought and volition are the threefold functions of the mind. Cognition , desire, voition are the three mental processes. Mind has three states, vi., active, passive and neutral. Mind always wants variety and new sensations. It is disgusted with monotony.
Speed reading
Speed reading page23
the def of reading
1. Recognition: reader;s knowledge of the alphabetic symbols
2. Assimilation: the physical process of perception and scanning
3. Intra - integration: basic understanding derived from the reading material itself awith minimum dependence on past experience, other than knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.
4. Extra - integration: analysis, criticism, appreciation, selection and rejection.
5. Retention: this is the capacity to store the information in memory.
6. Recall: the ability to recover the information from memory storage
7. communication: this represents teh application of the information and may be further broken down into at least 4 categories, which are:
* written communication
* spoken communication
* communication through drawing and the manipulation of objects
* thinking, which is another word for communication with the self;
Preliminary Exercise
Subvocalisation & the Thought- Stream
Generally speaking, subcvocalisation is unnecessary to the adult reader, except perhaps when reading poetry.
A thought-stream is essential for full understanding.
STEP1.
STEP2. count out loud from one to ten repeatedly, whilst reading the page silentl using thought stream. Counting out loud will occupy the motor system so that the mind is unable to subvocalise.
STEP3.
....
C- Speed perception ; pacing ; scanning;
The prince
The Prince page 62 chapter 24
Such as they are, its ethics are those of Machiavellu's contem[oraries; year they cannot be sai to be out of date so long as teh governments of Euarope rely on material rather thatn on moral forces.
The Prince is bestrewn with truths that can be proved at every turn.
IN politics there are no perfectly safe courses; prudence consists in choosing the least dangerous ones.
From whose conduct and fate he drew the moral that it is far better to earn the confidence of the people than to rely on fortresses. Yet in "the prince" the duke is in point of fact cited as a type of the man who rises on the fortune of others, and falls with them; who takes every course that might be expected from a prudent man but the course which will save him; who is prepared for all eventualotoes but the one which happens; and who, when all his anilities fail to carry him through exclains taht it was not his fault but an extraordinary and unforseen fatality.
Its problems are still debatable and interesting, because they are the eternal problems between the ruled and their rulers.
The prince with more than a merely artistic or historucal interest is the incovtrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which still guide nations and rulers in their relationship with each other and their neighbours.
So to understand the nature of the people it needs to be a prince and to uinderstant dthat if princes it needs to be of the people.
He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neighter their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality.
... to make himself hte head and defender of his less powerful neighbours and to weaken the more powerful amongst them, taking care that no foreigner as powerful as himself shall, by any accident, get a footing there; for it will always happen tha tsuch a one will be introduced by those who are discontented, either through excess of ambition or through fear as on ehas seen already.
This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any ediface: thus, whilst he had endured much trouble in acruiting, he had but little in keeping.
Page 30. Para 2.
FOr this reason many consider that a wise prince, when he has the opportunity, ought with craft to foster some animosity against himself, so that, having crushed it, his renown may rise highher.
I must not fail to warn a prince, who by menas of secret favours has acquired a new state, that he must well consider the reasons which induced those to favour him who did so; and if it be not a natural affection towards him, but only discontent with their government, then he will only keep them friendly with great trouble and difficulty, for it will be impossible to satisfy them.
But to enable a prince to form an opinion of his sevatn there is one test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, sucj a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince, and never pay any attention to matters in which the prince is not concerned.
Dam against flood. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she tuwns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her.
All this marises from nothing else than wherther or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times.
The picture of Doryan Grey
page139 end {{ Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes" ;;;; What is a cynic? A man who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. "}} {{ When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself}}
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal
the artist is art's aim. No artist tries to prove anything. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse
than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys
the harmony of any face.
It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who,
on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil.
Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one
believes it oneself.
"Dorian Gray" is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him.
I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than
when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said,
of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines,
in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. "That is all."
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love:
it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of jeeoing our place.
There is no such thing as a good influenjce, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral form the scientific point of view."
"Why>"
"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natureal thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. HE becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowdays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, whichis the basis of morals the terror of God which is the secret of religion-- these are the two things that govern us. And yet--"
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its mostrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were? How clear, and vivd, and cruel! One could not esceape from htem.
You are quite right to do that" he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul but the sense, just as nothing can cure the sense but the soul."
Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.
... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thouht is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. The true mystery of the world is the visible, nothe invisible.
Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.
Live! LIve the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations! Be afraid of nothing...
Only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passionis that the caprice lasts a little longer."
The scarlet would pass away form his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, adn uncouth.
Young men want to be faithful,and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot; that is all one can say."
Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To tes reality we must see it on hte tight rope. When the verities become actobats, we can judge them.
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Never marry at all, DOrian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
"SEARCH FOR BEAUTY BEING THE REAL SECRET OF LIFE."
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect-- simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passionfor property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might puck them up.
"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought. "
From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine.
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of theart of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.
Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought?
She was free in her prison of passion!!
Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.
To be good is to be in harmony with one's self.
If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, whe is worthy of all your adoration, wortthy of the adoration of the world.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating-- people who know absolutely everything , adn people who know absolutely nothing.
When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not hte priest, that gives us absolution.
They make one believe in thereality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love.
Ethernal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins-- he was to have all these things.
Perhaps one should never put one's worhip into words.
Things that he had dimlly dreamt of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradualy revealed.
The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy.
It was to have its sevice of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not hte fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.
BUt it was teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itslef but a moment.
He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.
There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain , seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will.
In the common world of fact the wicjked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
Knowledge would be fatal. It is hte uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
The world as I see
In times of crises people are generally blind to everything outside their immediate necessities.
A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.
He has only been his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Enouth for me the mystery of the erernity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
I most seriously believe that one does people the best sevice by giving them some elecating work to do and thus indirectly elevating them.
The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so muck in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave.
Besides, one always cuts a poor figure if one complains about others who are struggling for their place in teh sun too after their own fashion.
All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thuis do we mortals achieve immortality in hte permanent things which we create in common.
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religous basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death.
Only one who has devoted his life to similar can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man strength of this sort. A contemporaru has said, not unjustly, tha tin this materialistic age of ours the sertious scientific workers are the only progoundly religious people.
Thomas Sir More
Why should pain and suffering be allowed to exist? He asks, then answers -- " The sun shines on good and bad. God often gives evil people good fortune just in order to call tehm by kindness to him. Then, if this does not succeed, HE gives them sorrow. Sometimes those in prosperity cannot creep to GOD, while in tribulation they run forward to him apace."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Walter Kaufman
Faith in God is dead as a matter of cultural fact, and any meaning of life in the sense of supernatural purpose is gone. Now it is up to man to give his life meaning by raisin himself above teh animals and the all-too-human. Our so-called human nature is precisely what we should do well to overcome; and the man who has overcome it Zarathustra calls the overman.
Nietzsche wants no believers but like Socrates, aims to help others to find themselves adn surpass him.
And if you cannot be saints of knowledge,a t least be its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such sainthood. Let your work be struggle. Let your peace be a victory. Not your pity but your courage far saved the unfortunate. page 47
Verily man gave themselves all their good and evil. Veruly they did not take it they did not find it not did it come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself- he alone created a meaning for things a human meaning. Therefore he calls himself "man" which means: teh esteemer. page59
Thus speaks the fool: " Association with other people corrupts one's character - especially one has none. "
Today you are still suffering form the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry out " I am alone" The time will no longer be in sight and that which seems low will be all too near; even what seems sublim to you will frighten you like a ghost. And you will cry out " All is false",
A little revenge is more human than no revenge.
Remain faithful to the earth my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift giving love and knowledge serve the meaning of earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against erenal walls. page 76
God is conjecture; but I desire that your conjecture should be limited by what is thinkable. Could you think a GOD? But this is waht the will to truth should mean to you: that eveything be cahnged into twhat is thinkable for man visible for man, feeble by man. You should think through your own senses to their consequences. And what you have called worl, that shall be created only by you: your reason, your image, your will, your love shall thus be realized. page86
Whatever in me has feeling, suffers and is in proson but my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and liberty.
And if a friend does you evil then say: " I forgive you what you did to me; but that you have done it to yourself - how could I forgive that?" Thus speaks all great love; it overcomes even forgiveness adn pity.
And now are you angry with me because I teach that there is no reward and paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward. Alas, that is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things and now also into the foundation of your souls, you are virtuous. page 94
Alas, I often frew weary of the spirit when I found that even the rabble had spirit.
I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality. For, to me justice speaks thus:" Men are not equal." Nor shall they become equal. What would my love of the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
The struggle and inequality are present even in beauty, and also war for power and more power: that is what he teaches us here in the plainest parable. page 101
Like the sail, trembling with the voilence of the spirit, my wisdom goes over the sea- my wild wisdom.
Lord of the rings
The hobbit : Page38
Fellowship of the Rings
All wehave to decide is hwat to do with the time that is given, us.
because he began his ownership of the ____ so. With Pity.
All that is gold does not glidder,
NOt all those who wander are lost;
He bitterluy regretted his foolishness, and reproached himself for weakness of will; for he now perceived that in putting on the Ring he obeyed not his own desire but the commanding wish of his enemies.
The future good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present.
One good turn deserves another.
NO need to brood on what tomorrow may bring;
What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant
-Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.
-But it is more nearly possible for a public to enlighten itself: this is even inescapable if only the public is given its freedom. For there will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself
-All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters.
-he pastor: Don't argue, believe! (Only a single lord in the world says: Argue, as much as you want to and about what you please, but obey!
Your personality and YOU (Sarah Splaver)
The brain is tangible. It consists of masses of nerve tissues, the vast bulk of which is housef within the skiull. The mind however is intangible. THe mind is made up all your mental processes - your thoughts, your reasoning your imagination your feelings your attitudes your memories your dreams your preceptions your motivations and all of your other varied mental activities and all of your controls which you consciously or unconsciously exerciese over these mental processes.
It is most important that you establish the habit of going steady with study.
Learning requires effort. Regular periodic.
Leartning requires reinforcement. To learn to acquire knowledge to remember we must stenghten these synaptic connections. This strength comes from reinforcement through regular study sessions.
Lasting learning, the kind of learning which will saty with you for many years is the result of proper periodic studying.
School is learning not just for the taking and passing of tests.
Planning is foundation of proper study habits.
There are number of diffeerent mental abilities. Of special concern to you for educational and career planning purposes are the six primary mental abilities.
1. verbal comprehension ability: is the power to grasp teh meaning of what you hear and what you read
2. word fluency ability : if you are superior word fluency ability you are able to express yourself readily and skillfully in writing and speaking.
3. spacial ability: is the capacity to see an object in all of its dimensions some people are able to look at teh drawing of a structure and visualize it in all of its height depth and breath.
4. numerical ability: working with numbers.
5. reasoning ability:is facility which enables you to delve into problems and solve them logically.
6. memory :
EVERY CHILD NEEDS TO FEEL THAT HE IS LOVED.
Although they react to teh love which is bestowedd upon them with joy laughter ahugs kisses and otehr indicidual responses, they must develop and griw before they inwardly feel the emotion of love toward trhose who love them. Thus the child develops from being a RECIEVER OF LOVER, one who needs very mich to be loved, to a GIVER OF LOVE, one who creats love within himself and can give this love to his mother and father.
In OTHELLO, Shakespeare refers to jealosy as "the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on". Bottling up your emotions within you however can be a great threat and very damaging to your health. As emotional pressure rise if they are not released in awholesome fashion they may bring on a dangerious outburst or an emotional explosion injurious to teh person himself and often too to innocent victims in his environment.
Escape MECHANISMS.
- POSTPHONEMENT
- FANTASY is an imaginary state wherein all desires are delicered and all distresses disappear. Daydreaming is popular form of fantasy. (excessive daydraming is bad) It becomes detrimental when daydreamer receives so much pleasure from imaginary events taht these replace the need for real accomplishments and real action.
- etc
"God gives me the serenity to accept the things O cannot change
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."
The "why's"' of white lies
The white lie, in a way is a type of tactful talk diplomatically designed to soothe the feelings of the person at whom it is directed. Whereas slander accuses and abuses the while lie eases and appeases.
Success is one of the most misused words in the English language. Success is self-fulfillment. What is sefl-fulfillment? It is that inner glow, that personal gratification, which comes to you when you know that you have done somehting well and that what you have done has seved a useful purpose.
Essentially education is search for TRUTH, the search for knowledge to enable us to live better and fuller lives. "Veritas" the latin word for "truth" is firmly entrenched in teh mottoes of colleges and universities throughout the nation.
Mein Kampf by A.Hitler
Mein Kampf
-When I look back over so many years and try to judge the results of that experience I find two very significant facts standing out clearly before my mind.
-To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events.
-World history became more and more an inexhaustible source for the understanding of contemporary historical events, which means politics. Therefore I will not "learn" politics but let politics teach me.
And a meagre morsel indeed it was, not even sufficient to still the hunger which I constantly felt. That hunger was the faithful guardian which never left me but took part in everything I did.
-In the case of such a person the hard struggle through which he passes often destroys his normal human sympathy.His own fight for existence kills his sensibility for the misery of those who have been left behind.
-The man who has never been in the clutches of that crushing viper can never know what its poison is.
-I have had actual experience of all this in hundreds of cases. At first I was disgusted and indignant; but later on I came to recognize the whole tragedy of their misfortune and to understand the profound causes of it. They were the unhappy victims of evil circumstances.
- Even in those days I already saw that there was a two-fold method by which alone it would be possible to bring about an amelioration of these conditions. This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved.
-Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation - which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred - and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development.
- I can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect a thing I must at least have some knowledge of it
- He believes that he has acquired knowledge, whereas the truth is that every increase in such ‘knowledge’ draws him more and more away from real life, until he finally ends up in some sanatorium or takes to politics and becomes a parliamentary deputy.
Such a person never succeeds in turning his knowledge to practical account when the opportune moment arrives; for his mental equipment is not ordered with a view to meeting the demands of everyday life.
- For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health.
- so that it was at that time possible to persuade the masses that this ridiculous measure in which the most sacred claims of the working-classes were being granted represented a diabolical plan to weaken their fighting power in this easy way and, if possible, to paralyse it. One will not be astonished at the success of these allegations if one remembers what a small measure of thinking power the broad masses possess.
- A time came when I no longer passed blindly along the street of the mighty city, as I had done in the early days, but now with my eyes open not only to study the buildings but also the human beings.
- Generally speaking a man should not publicly take part in politics before he has reached the age of thirty, though, of course, exceptions must be made in the case of those who are naturally gifted with extraordinary political abilities.
- A man must first acquire a fund of general ideas and fit them together so as to form an organic structure of personal thought or outlook on life - a Weltanschhauung.
- If these pre-requisite conditions are not fulfilled, and if a man should enter political life without this equipment, he will run a twofold risk. In the first place, he may find during the course of events that the stand which he originally took in regard to some essential question was wrong. He will now have to abandon his former position or else stick to it against his better knowledge and riper wisdom and after his reason and convictions have already proved it untenable.
-I shall subsequently deal more fully with the problem to which this kind of parliamentary vermin give rise.
When a man has reached his thirtieth year he has still a great deal to learn. That is obvious. But henceforward what he learns will principally be an amplification of his basic ideas; it will be fitted in with them organically so as to fill up the framework of the fundamental Weltanschhauung which he already possesses. What he learns anew will not imply the abandonment of principles already held, but rather a deeper knowledge of those principles. And thus his colleagues will never have the discomforting feeling that they have been hitherto falsely led by him.
- His successors had neither the ability nor the will-power necessary for the task they had to face.
- The setting up of a representative parliamentary body, without insisting on the preliminary that only one language should be used in all public intercourse under the State, was the first great blow to the predominance of the German element in the Dual Monarchy.
- The danger which exists in these slumbering separatist instincts can be rendered more or less innocuous only through centuries of common education, common traditions and common interests.
- By far the most effective branch of political education, which in this connection is best expressed by the word ‘propaganda’, is carried on by the Press. The Press is the chief means employed in the process of political ‘enlightenment’. It represents a kind of school for adults. This educational activity, however, is not in the hands of the State but in the clutches of powers which are partly of a very inferior character. While still a young man in Vienna I had excellent opportunities for coming to know the men who owned this machine for mass instruction, as well as those who supplied it with the ideas it distributed.
- As a contrast to this kind of democracy we have the German democracy, which is a true democracy; for here the leader is freely chosen and is obliged to accept full responsibility for all his actions and omissions. The problems to be dealt with are not put to the vote of the majority; but they are decided upon by the individual, and as a guarantee of responsibility for those decisions he pledges all he has in the world and even his life.
- If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purpose of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right but also the duty of every individual citizen.
The question of whether and when such a situation exists cannot be answered by theoretical dissertations but only by the exercise of force, and it is success that decides the issue.
- Generally speaking, we must not forget that the highest aim of human existence is not the maintenance of a State of Government but rather the conservation of the race.
- He had a rare gift of insight into human nature and he was very careful not to take men as something better than they were in reality. He based his plans on the practical possibilities which human life offered him, whereas Schönerer had only little discrimination in that respect. All ideas that this Pan-German had were right in the abstract, but he did not have the forcefulness or understanding necessary to put his ideas across to the broad masses. He was not able to formulate them so that they could be easily grasped by the masses, whose powers of comprehension are limited and will always remain so. Therefore all Schönerer’s knowledge was only the wisdom of a prophet and he never could succeed in having it put into practice.
- This lack of insight into human nature led him to form a wrong estimate of the forces behind certain movements and the inherent strength of old institutions.
- In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schönerer. His profound knowledge of human nature enabled him to form a correct estimate of the various social forces and it saved him from under-rating the power of existing institutions. And it was perhaps this very quality which enabled him to utilize those institutions as a means to serve the purposes of his policy.
He saw only too clearly that, in our epoch, the political fighting power of the upper classes is quite insignificant and not at all capable of fighting for a great new movement until the triumph of that movement be secured. Thus he devoted the greatest part of his political activity to the task of winning over those sections of the population whose existence was in danger and fostering the militant spirit in them rather than attempting to paralyse it. He was also quick to adopt all available means for winning the support of long-established institutions, so as to be able to derive the greatest possible advantage for his movement from those old sources of power.
-. His extremely wise attitude towards the Catholic Church rapidly won over the younger clergy in such large numbers that the old Clerical Party was forced to retire from the field of action or else, which was the wiser course, join the new Party, in the hope of gradually winning back one position after another.
- A man who fights only for his own existence has not much left over for the service of the community.
- Mass meetings in public became more and more rare, though these are the only means of exercising a really effective influence on the people; because here the influence comes from direct personal contact and in this way the support of large sections of the people can be obtained.
- The wrong impression created by the Press was no longer corrected by personal contact with the people through public meetings, whereby the individual representatives might have given a true account of their activities.
- The task of the pen must always be that of presenting the theoretical concepts which motivate such changes. The force which has ever and always set in motion great historical avalanches of religious and political movements is the magic power of the spoken word.
- The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of glowing passion; but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others. It is only through the capacity for passionate feeling that chosen leaders can wield the power of the word which, like hammer blows, will open the door to the hearts of the people.
- To a political leader the religious teachings and practices of his people should be sacred and inviolable.
-If the leaders had known that, for psychological reasons alone, it is not expedient to place two or more sets of adversaries before the masses - since that leads to a complete splitting up of their fighting strength - they would have concentrated the full and undivided force of their attack against a single adversary.
-But even though there is much that can really be said against the various religious denominations, political leaders must not forget that the experience of history teaches us that no purely political party in similar circumstances ever succeeded in bringing about a religious reformation.
- It was nationalist, but unfortunately it paid too little heed to the social problem, and thus it failed to gain the support of the masses.
- The Christian-Socialists grasped the significance of the social question; but they adopted the wrong principles in their struggle against Jewry, and they utterly failed to appreciate the value of the national idea as a source of political energy.
- The crimes which the House of Habsburg committed against Italian freedom and independence during several centuries were too grave to be forgiven, even with the best of goodwill.
- Nature must now step in once more and select those who are to survive, or else man will help himself by artificially preventing his own increase, with all the fatal consequences for the race and the species which have been already mentioned. (darvinism, he strongly supports “survival” concept since he thinks that it will challenge the nature of the race and make the race even more stronger. I mean nature makes it, nature…)
-internal colonization theory
-Therefore the only possibility which Germany had of carrying a sound territorial policy into effect was that of acquiring new territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose as long as they are not suited for settlement by Europeans on a large scale. In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle.
-If we consider the question of what those forces actually are which are necessary to the creation and preservation of a State, we shall find that they are: The capacity and readiness to sacrifice the individual to the common welfare. That these qualities have nothing at all to do with economics can be proved by referring to the simple fact that man does not sacrifice himself for material interests. In other words, he will die for an ideal but not for a business
- We were fighting for our bread; but the English declared that they were fighting for ‘freedom’, and not at all for their own freedom. Oh, no, but for the freedom of the small nations.
- They never understood that as soon as man is called upon to struggle for purely material causes he will avoid death as best he can; for death and the enjoyment of the material fruits of a victory are quite incompatible concepts. The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake. And only the will to save the race and native land or the State, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.
Therefore when force is employed success is dependent on the consistent manner in which it is used. This persistence, however, is nothing less than the product of definite spiritual convictions. Every form of force that is not supported by a spiritual backing will be always indecisive and uncertain.
Mendacious fatuous
. Despite all views to the contrary, this honour does actually exist, or rather it will have to exist; for a nation without honour will sooner or later lose its freedom and independence.
-What, for example, should we say of a poster which purported to advertise some new brand of soap by insisting on the excellent qualities of the competitive brands? We should naturally shake our heads
detrimental.
- Propaganda must be limited to a few simple themes and these must be represented again and again. Here, as in innumerable other cases, perseverance is the first and most important condition of success.
Such people grow sick and tired of everything. They always long for change and will always be incapable of putting themselves in the position of picturing the wants of their less callous fellow-creatures in their immediate neighbourhood, let alone trying to understand them.
- The moment the organization and message of a propagandist movement begins to be orientated according to their tastes it becomes incoherent and scattered.
- But I was a being without a name, one among eight millions. Hence it was better for me to keep my mouth shut and do my duty as well as I could in the position to which I had been assigned.
-? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence, realizing that this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when compared with the misfortune of one’s country.
-. I spent whole days pondering on the problem of what could be done, but unfortunately every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown and therefore did not have even the first pre-requisite necessary for effective action. Later on I shall explain the reasons why I could not decide to join any of the parties then in existence.
- The attention which I had given to economic problems during my earlier years was more or less confined to considerations arising directly out of the social problem.
- The significance of a political philosopher does not depend on the practical success of the plans he lays down but rather on their absolute truth and the influence they exert on the progress of mankind. If it were otherwise, the founders of religions could not be considered as the greatest men who have ever lived, because their moral aims will never be completely or even approximately carried out in practice. Even that religion which is called the Religion of Love is really no more than a faint reflex of the will of its sublime Founder. But its significance lies in the orientation which it endeavoured to give to human civilization, and human virtue and morals.
- I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking. My voice had become so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled.
- I am able to state that my talks were successful. During the course of my lectures I have led back hundreds and even thousands of my fellow countrymen to their people and their fatherland. I ‘nationalized’ these troops and by so doing I helped to restore general discipline.
Here again I made the acquaintance of several comrades whose thought ran along the same lines as my own and who later became members of the first group out of which the new movement developed.
- The fact that I was poor and without resources could, in my opinion, be the easiest to bear. But the fact that I was utterly unknown raised a more difficult problem. I was only one of the millions which Chance allows to exist or cease to exist, whom even their next-door neighbours will not consent to know. Another difficulty arose from the fact that I had not gone through the regular school curriculum.
- For just as bodily ailments can be cured only when their origin has been diagnosed, so also political disease can be treated only when it has been diagnosed. It is obvious of course that the external symptoms of any disease can be more readily detected than its internal causes, for these symptoms strike the eye more easily.
-. It was simply and exclusively limited to the production of pure knowledge and paid little attention to the development of practical ability. Still less attention was given to the development of individual character, in so far as this is ever possible. And hardly any attention at all was paid to the development of a sense of responsibility, to strengthening the will and the powers of decision. The result of this method was to produce erudite people who had a passion for knowing everything.
- Generally, readers of the Press can be classified into three groups:
First, those who believe everything they read;
Second, those who no longer believe anything;
Third, those who critically examine what they read and form their judgments accordingly.
Numerically, the first group is by far the strongest, being composed of the broad masses of the people. Intellectually, it forms the simplest portion of the nation. It cannot be classified according to occupation but only into grades of intelligence.
-The third group is easily the smallest, being composed of real intellectuals whom natural aptitude and education have taught to think for themselves and who in all things try to form their own judgments, while at the same time carefully sifting what they read.
-. That is one of the results of our defective education, which turns the youth away from the instinctive dictates of Nature, pumps into them a certain amount of knowledge without however being able to bring them to what is the supreme act of knowing. To this end diligence and goodwill are of no avail, if innate understanding fail. This final knowledge at which man must aim is the understanding of causes which are instinctively perceived.
In the case of the man there is the additional fact that he frequently is unfortunate enough to run up against this danger when he is under the influence of alcohol.
. Prostitution, therefore, can only be really seriously tackled if, by means of a radical social reform, early marriage is made easier than hitherto. This is the first preliminary necessity for the solution of this problem.
Our system of education entirely loses sight of the fact that in the long run a healthy mind can exist only in a healthy body. This statement, with few exceptions, applies particularly to the broad masses of the nation.
But if religious teaching and religious faith were once accepted by the broad masses as active forces in their lives, then the absolute authority of the doctrines of faith would be the foundation of all practical effort. There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so. But the greatest damage of all has come from the practice of debasing religion as a means that can be exploited to serve political interests, or rather commercial interests. The impudent and loud-mouthed liars who do this make their profession of faith before the whole world in stentorian tones so that all poor mortals may hear - not that they are ready to die for it if necessary but rather that they may live all the better. They are ready to sell their faith for any political quid pro quo.
The average man or woman could not have felt a wave of enthusiasm surging within the breast when, for example, at the turn of the century, a princess in uniform and on horseback had the soldiers file past her on parade. Those high circles had apparently no idea of the impression which such a parade made on the minds of ordinary people; else such unfortunate occurrences would not have taken place. The sentimental humanitarianism - not always very sincere - which was professed in those high circles was often more repulsive than attractive. When, for instance, the Princess X condescended to taste the products of a soup kitchen and found them excellent, as usual, such a gesture might have made an excellent impression in times long past, but on this occasion it had the opposite effect to what was intended.
??? The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed. It would be impossible to find a fox which has a kindly and protective disposition towards geese, just as no cat exists which has a friendly disposition towards mice.????
--He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.
Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that is how the matter really stands.
--Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary, etc.
This mental attitude, which forces self-interest to recede into the background in favour of the common weal, is the first prerequisite for any kind of really human civilization.
--Posterity will not remember those who pursued only their own individual interests, but it will praise those heroes who renounced their own happiness.
It is always more difficult to fight successfully against Faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them to action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude, but a determined will, backed up by force, when necessary.
(4) The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the positive struggle for their own aims but are also determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them.
--The thing that matters here is not the vision of the man of genius who created the great idea but rather the success which his apostles achieve in shaping the expression of this idea so as to bring it home to the minds of the masses.
-- Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.
-- The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for leadership. For the leader must have the other necessary qualities. Among these qualities will-power and energy must be considered as more serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent, determination and perseverance.
-- A movement can become great only if the unhampered development of its internal strength be safeguarded and steadfastly augmented, until victory over all its competitors be secured.
The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for leadership. For the leader must have the other necessary qualities. Among these qualities will-power and energy must be considered as more serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent, determination and perseverance.
. A business man who has been in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined it through his mismanagement is not the kind of person one would recommend for the founding of a new firm.
Because this concept is so indefinite from the practical viewpoint, it gives rise to various interpretations and thus people can appeal to it all the more easily as a sort of personal recommendation. Whenever such a vague concept, which is subject to so many interpretations, is admitted into a political movement it tends to break up the disciplined solidarity of the fighting forces. No such solidarity can be maintained if each individual member be allowed to define for himself what he believes and what he is willing to do.
He was like one of the ascetic characters of the classical era and was at the same time that kind of straightforward German for whom the saying ‘Better dead than a slave’ is not an empty phrase but a veritable heart’s cry.
The völkisch belief holds that humanity must have its ideals, because ideals are a necessary condition of human existence itself.
