via Fractal Enlightenment
“Quotations are like wayside robbers who leap out, brandishing weapons, and relieve the idler of his certainty.” ~ Walter Benjamin
Ah quotations, those little packets of redemption, those tiny bundles of emancipation. They take our tiny bowls of fixed thinking and stir them up into giant bowls of flexible thinking. They eclipse both certitude and uncertainty, intermittently. They intellectually crush out. In this article we’ll delve into ten quotations that tear the veil between the believer and his/her belief. Ten quotes that rattle the cage of our certainty, tease out the hypocrisy of our convictions, and force our heads over the edge of the abyss of the human condition. As Bradford Keeney pinpointed, “Words are only useful in teasing one another. In teasing we are less likely to get stuck in any particular belief, attitude, or form of knowing.”
Number one: “We understand nothing! If you understand this, you understand everything.” ~ Paul Mic
It’s okay that we’re fallible. It’s okay that we’re imperfect and prone to make mistakes. It’s even okay that we’re inherently hypocritical and torn between spirit and flesh. After all, we are a ridiculously young species in a preposterously ancient universe. Does this get us off the hook? Nope. But it does get us out of our own way, so that we’re able to focus on what really matters: life, love, and laughter. As, Jorge Luis Borges said, polishing up the predicament, “To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”
Number two: “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” ~ Richard Feynman
Indeed. Questions are infinite and free. Answers are finite and fixed. I would even go so far as to say that the only answer is to question. How could it not be? When you can question anything, ad infinitum. One could even question my declaration that the only answer is to question. As Elie Weisel said, “Every question possesses a power that does not lie within the answer.” Of course! In the end all one has are questions with which to challenge the lot; to usurp the throne it’s intellections, and make assumptions naught. And then there’s Franz Kafka’s thought on the subject that knocks it out of the park, “He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.”
Number three: “Time makes ancient good uncouth.” ~ James Russell Lowell
Such a thought keeps us open to new evidence, new arguments, and new experiences, so that we may perhaps evolve, or co-evolve, into having a healthier perspective of reality. We’re able to move from thesis to anti-thesis and into synthesis, and then back into thesis, to which a new anti-thesis becomes inevitable. Lest we doom ourselves to making the same mistakes as our ancestors did, it behooves us to intuit when an antiquated ideal has grown unhealthy and stale. As Aldous Huxley warned, rounding out the thought, “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
Number four: “You must change in order to find your truest self. And keep changing. The false idol is any form that hangs around too long and gets fossilized. It’s worth considering that if your ideas of God don’t change, then your ideas are dead. God is not dead. He simply went elsewhere because you were too boring… Tease God. Do not fear God. A fool’s love is what God loves best. It represents the ready and available heart of a child at play.” ~ Bradford Keeney
Barring the idea that everything is an illusion, ‘change’ is perhaps the only certainty we have to hang our hats on. It seems to be the only permanent. Which is ironic, because change is the epitome of impermanence. Oh well. Might as well have a good sense of humor about it. Better to laugh with all the gods (and with the absence of god, if you’re an atheist) than to stare all self-serious and dead-mackerel-eyed into the infinite nothingness vainly tempting to force-feed “Truth” into a reality that doesn’t give a rat’s as*. Alan Watts smooths out the thought, “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
Number five: “God emptied to the limit is man, and man emptied to the limit is God.” ~ Alan Watts
Imagine it: God emptied to the limit. What’s left? Man, in his imperfect, naked vulnerability: a finite, trembling creature at the seeming center of an Infinite Flourishing. Imagine further: Man emptied to the limit. What’s left? God, writhing in perfect union with all things, interdependently spread out into infinite ubiquity. Such is the existential predicament of mankind: a breath-gasping, sphincter-tightening, mortal beast daring his soul into transcending it all with the self-actualized symbolism of God. Either way, man is God and God is man. Especially considering Meister Eckhart’s thought on the subject, “The eye with which I see God, is the same eye with which God sees me.” Or? As Rumi said, “Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.”
Number six: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may very well be another profound truth.” ~ Niels Bohr
Truth shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s ability to hold multiple conflicting dispositions at the same time regarding the same topic. In short: Truth is a slippery red herring. In order to handle it, the mind must be both flexible and sharp, all while not taking itself too seriously. This requires being circumspect with ideas while also attempting to sharpen them on the whetstone of probability. And then having the audacity to be circumspect with probability. Perhaps nobody said it better than Aristotle, “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Number seven: “’I don’t know’ is an unparalleled source of power, a declaration of independence from the pressure to have an opinion about every single subject. It’s fun to say. Try it: ‘I don’t know.’ Let go of the drive to have it all figured out: ‘I don’t know.’ Proclaim the only truth you can be totally sure of: ‘I don’t know.’ Empty your mind and lift your heart: ‘I don’t know.’ Use it as a battle cry, a joyous affirmation of your oneness with the Great Mystery: ‘I don’t know.’” ~ Rob Brezsny
Indeed. “I don’t know” frees us into a state of “prepared to learn.” We are liberated from the burden of having the answers. We shed the weight, so that maybe we can pack it back up in a healthier way that makes us more robust. We unlearn what we have learned. Then we shed the weight again, back into a state of “I don’t know.” We empty the cup, so that we can fill it back up with the fresh water of awe and wonder. Then we empty it again. Over and over. Education by perpetual astonishment is the thing. ‘I don’t know’ in order that I may be overwhelmed by my not knowing.
Number eight: “The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” ~ Mark Twain
If, as Voltaire said, “Religion began when the first conman met the first fool,” then perhaps the fool gets un-fooled by realizing that the conman is just a man – fallible, flawed, imperfect, prone to mistakes, and more than likely just as wrong about his assertions as the fool is about his uncertainty. The absolute folly of the human condition is the only salvation for the fool, if only he could intuit it. But alas, as Mark Twain surmised, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Number nine: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” ~ Rene Descartes
Just as the folly of the human condition is the only salvation for the fool, so too is doubt the only salvation for the blindly faithful. And the predicament is much the same. How to get the blindly faithful passed their blind spot. It comes down to a problem of cognitive dissonance that’s exacerbated by people’s tendency to take themselves and their beliefs too seriously. But breakthroughs can be made. We just need to trip our ignorant religious tendencies into an enlightened spiritual dance. As Eckhart Tolle suggested, “Here is a new spiritual practice: Don’t take your thoughts too seriously.”
Number ten: “But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
There you are: a tiny human in a gargantuan cosmos, a small speck in a vast universe, a flash in the pan of Time heretofore. What to do with the existential angst? What to do with the delicious tearing between spirit and flesh? What to do with the preciously finite amount of time you have within an infinite reality? It’s all yours to take in. It’s all yours to open up to. It’s all yours to plant seeds so as to flourish into the healthiest, most open-minded version of yourself. It’s all yours to breathe in an out with a flexible and un-shatterable sense of humor. It’s all so serious that it’s not serious at all. Laughable, really. And yet, as Terence McKenna profoundly stated, “You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
Sunday, August 7, 2016
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
The Wisdom of Erich Fromm
"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic."
“Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.”
“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinion as the result of their own thinking - and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as this of the majority."
“Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.”
“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinion as the result of their own thinking - and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as this of the majority."
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
The Tao of politics
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Col. House, November 21, l933
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966
“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
Winston Churchill, 1922
“The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax exempt foundation (i.e. Rockefeller), and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education, and mass communication media, that it should be familiar to every American concerned with good government and with preserving and defending the US Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation’s right-to-know machinery, the news media; usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities. The CFR is the establishment. Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also finances and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the US from a sovereign Republic into a servile member of a one-world dictatorship.”
Rep. John R. Rarick (D-LA)
“The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.”
Henry Ford
“Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.”
David Rockefeller, Memoirs
“The interests behind the Bush administration, such as the CFR, the Trilateral Commission – founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller – and the Bilderberg Group have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years.”
Dr. Johannes Koeppl, Former German Ministry for Defence official and advisor to NATO
“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”
John F. Hylan, NYC Mayor, 1922
“The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans. “
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, Coningsby, the New Generation
“The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice, 1952
“The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semioccult power which… pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I.”
MajorGeneral J.F.C. Fuller, British military historian, l941
“Fifty men have run America, and that’s a high figure.”
Joseph Kennedy, The New York Times, July 26th, l936
“It bends governments to its will sometimes by promises, sometimes by threats. It has found its way into every class of Society, and forms an invisible and irresponsible power, an independent government, as it were, within the body corporate of the lawful state.”
Pope Leo XIII, 1902
“Three hundred men, all of-whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.”
Walter Rathenau, head of German General Electric, 1909. Rathenau was Prime Minister of Germany until he was assassinated in 1922.
“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments…my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known…because the American branch of this organisation (sometimes called the “Eastern Establishment”) has played a very significant role in the history of the United States in the last generation.”
Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University. Dr. Quigley was Bill Clinton’s mentor while he was at Georgetown University.
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Col. House, November 21, l933
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966
“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
Winston Churchill, 1922
“The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax exempt foundation (i.e. Rockefeller), and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education, and mass communication media, that it should be familiar to every American concerned with good government and with preserving and defending the US Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation’s right-to-know machinery, the news media; usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities. The CFR is the establishment. Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also finances and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the US from a sovereign Republic into a servile member of a one-world dictatorship.”
Rep. John R. Rarick (D-LA)
“The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.”
Henry Ford
“Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.”
David Rockefeller, Memoirs
“The interests behind the Bush administration, such as the CFR, the Trilateral Commission – founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller – and the Bilderberg Group have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years.”
Dr. Johannes Koeppl, Former German Ministry for Defence official and advisor to NATO
“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”
John F. Hylan, NYC Mayor, 1922
“The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans. “
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, Coningsby, the New Generation
“The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice, 1952
“The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semioccult power which… pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I.”
MajorGeneral J.F.C. Fuller, British military historian, l941
“Fifty men have run America, and that’s a high figure.”
Joseph Kennedy, The New York Times, July 26th, l936
“It bends governments to its will sometimes by promises, sometimes by threats. It has found its way into every class of Society, and forms an invisible and irresponsible power, an independent government, as it were, within the body corporate of the lawful state.”
Pope Leo XIII, 1902
“Three hundred men, all of-whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.”
Walter Rathenau, head of German General Electric, 1909. Rathenau was Prime Minister of Germany until he was assassinated in 1922.
“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments…my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known…because the American branch of this organisation (sometimes called the “Eastern Establishment”) has played a very significant role in the history of the United States in the last generation.”
Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University. Dr. Quigley was Bill Clinton’s mentor while he was at Georgetown University.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson
Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.
Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel.
"Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back…
I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.
Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own.
I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)
Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.
Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel.
"Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back…
I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.
Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own.
I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)
Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)