I have often noticed that nationalism is at its strongest at the periphery. Hitler was Austrian, Bonaparte Corsican. In postwar Greece and Turkey the two most prominent ultra-right nationalists had both been born in Cyprus. The most extreme Irish Rep...
As the social matrix becomes increasingly subject to rapid fluctuations, throwing out anchors into a collectivised past becomes more prominent than movement into a future. The desire to establish a core identity within the profusion of styles has led...
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution" notes B. Russerl, one of the prominent figure of modern philosophy. Sounds really ver...
The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judge...
I’ve often wondered how the term “'New Atheism”' gained such currency. It is a misnomer. There is nothing new about nonbelief. All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through...
Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play the...
Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason a...
Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to fee...
The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial re...
The 1980s witnessed radical advances in the theorisation of the study of literature in the universities. It had begun in France in the 1960s and it made a large impact on the higher education establishments of Britain and America. New life was breath...
One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the best organized a...
On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die facedown in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her c...
When exactly did this all change, and what were the social and theological factors that led to the change? The answer seems to be in the second century and: (1) because of the consolidation of ecclesial power in the hands of monarchial bishops and ot...
What do we do if we come across trouble, sir?' Cahill asked, slapping at a fly. 'As much as I enjoy giving the rebel turds a walloping, it should be down to the Militia to keep the buggers in check.' 'They are doing their job,' Mullone said, glancing...
A fresh dream-fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him ! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhaus...
The quintessential emblem of religion and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core is the sacrifice of a child by a parent. Almost all religious faiths incorporate the myth of such a sacrifice, and some have actually m...
Rogue: Hey. [Logan turns and looks at her] Rogue: You running again? Logan: No, not really. I've got some things to take care of up north. Rogue: Oh. [They stand in silence for a few moments, then Logan reaches out and plays with her hair, which now ...
13. A Buddha In Tokyo in th Meiji era there lived two prominent teachers of opposite characteristics. One, Unsho, an instructor in Shingon, kept Buddha's precepts scrupulously. He never drank intoxicants, nor did he eat after eleven o'clock in the mo...
And, really, she did like Chandler, too. She did. What woman wouldn’t? He was handsome and successful, a member of one of Nashville’s oldest and most prominent families. But she’d never felt anything more than a friendly sort of affection for h...
