When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, ye...
The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global changes have begun to mo...
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to ackn...
Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.
There was even a story passed among the queen’s court that when freshly hatched, Rhiannon bit her mother on the neck when she tried to cuddle her new daughter. But Rhiannon didn’t believe that for one second. True, she believed she bit her mother...
Polaris often remarks to Sol that Sirius loses his temper much less often these days. But the one sure way to send him into a flaming rage is to suggest that he finds a new Companion. Sirius will not hear of it. The small white sphere circling his go...
He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for...
War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It's ugly, and you don't even want to look at it let alone hang it on the wall, but you have no choice, once you know. Once you...
There are few phrases that annoy me more than I won't bite. The only line that pisses me off faster is when some drunk, ham-faced dude in a bar sees me trying to get past him and barks: Smile,it can't be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.
I'm afraid Dr. Mondrick chose an unfortunate publicity device. After all, the theory of human evolution is no longer front page news. Every known detail of the origin of mankind is extremely important to such a specialist as Dr. Mondrick, but it does...
I put the books I was returning on the appropriate desk, and I began looking at the shelves of new arrivals. Most of them were some permutation on self-help. Going by how popular these books were and how often they were checked out, everyone in Bon T...
If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals...
No longer will I measure myself against competitors, who don’t even know that a race is being run. From now on, I will measure myself against the man in front of me. I will measure myself against a new personal best, achieving my next ambitious goa...
Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism — indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved — so now it’s okay, ...
Saturday, September 17, 2005: Today in New Orleans, a traffic light worked. Someone watered flowers. And anyone with the means to get online could have heard Dr. Joy’s voice wafting in the dry wind, a sound of grace, comfort and familiarity here in...
We need to stop fighting the old systems and start creating new containers for people who are going through these spiritual openings,’ Tavis reflected. ‘Together, we need to build something that’s never existed before—a global network of ligh...
Law and custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The State will be generally satisfied with him; it wil...
part of the art of teaching is the ability to rearrange the world for students - to force them to see things in a new way. i've known too many stupid intellectuals to believe that education and wisdom come as a package deal along with facts, it's you...
In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you...
Travel is the discovery of truth; an affirmation of the promise that human kind is far more beautiful than it is flawed. With each trip comes a new optimism that where there is despair and hardship, there are ideas and people just waiting to be energ...
Optimistic people bring a sense of hope into world. Encouraging people bring a new meaning to life. They help you see past the clouds on a glooming day. They bring sunlight everyday
