User:Across.The.Synapse
Hello, my name Is Matthew.
This I know:
There are people who earnestly strive to foster and nurture the best in everyone and thus reveal the best in themselves, and there are those who strive to emphasize the worst in others, and thus foster and nurture the worst within themselves.
This I do not know:
Which are you most inclined to be?
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.
This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality.
We cannot maintain the complacent positive belief that only the law of the State is law properly so-called... We know that the law can be used as an instrument of policy... We have heard of, we may have met, the victims of laws that are oppressive, brutal and degrading. We believe that... Human Rights may stand above positive law.
I could bring counter-accusations, but I will not. I would rather seek acquittal through my virtues than your vices.
Gorgias, Defense of Palamedes
The finest possible expression of gratitude to a teacher is to go beyond him in just the way that Plato did.
Born to a premature death, a menial, subsistence-wage worker, odd-job man, the cleaner, the caught, the man under hatches, without bail--that's me, the colonial victim. Anyone who can pass the civil service examination today can kill me tomorrow -- with complete immunity.
That incomprehensible power, that immediate influence of the Deity which we call the vital principle, pervades all nature. We everywhere behold phenomena and effects which evidently announce its presence, though under an infinite variety of modifications and forms; and the existence of life is proclaimed by the whole universe around us. Life is that by which plants vegetate, by which animals feel and are actuated; but in the highest degree of perfection, sensation, and form, it appears in man, the supreme link of the visible creation. If we survey the whole chain of being, we shall nowhere find so complete a combination of almost all the vivifying powers of nature; nowhere so much vital energy, united with so long duration, as here. It needs excite no surprise, therefore, that the most perfect possessor of this benefit should value it so highly; and that the bare idea of living and existing should be attended with so much pleasure.
"When we look deeply into the patterns of an apple blossom, a seashell or a swinging pendulum... we discover a perfection, an incredible order, that awakens in us a sense of awe that we knew as children."
"I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I ain't a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns."
"If I write a cliché our language suffers. If what I write doesn't flash a spark into the nerves of the brain, then what is the use? What is the use of writing at all unless your writing can bring people to desire, or feel deeply, or see anew, or inspire creativity or reach out in solidarity? There is no use. If my writing is useless or cliché then tear it down. But show me! Even now, you, reading these words, "hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frere!" - why are you not creating yourself, writing your self, making a narrative out of your self, or if you can't make a narrative, why then aren't you creating a view of the world you perceive and love, a view that will help us see and know more completely? Why not? What of your own rage and desire at this moment? Why aren't you searching through Percy Shelley and Emma Goldman for new inspiration to live a life where you can experience the sunlight coming through the window in all of its burning beauty and dirty ugliness? Or perhaps this is also failure, our search, our longing, as well as our writing. Because we must fail always, even as we succeed, when our success is not with others. Even our talk of beauty must fail when it implies ignorance of so much suffering. Only when we are all creator/spectators of the democracy of genius that is in each of us, only when we are making it possible for all individuals of our species to experience the world to its fullest, only then will we become the creative human beings that each of us should become, must become, to fulfill the genius which is the specificity of each individual. When we can all have a chance to work together, write poetry, make movies together, theorize for others and for ourselves then we will know our desires, and truly begin to make a human world. So this is your utopian note, hypocrite reader.
I know I will not always live up to my hopes. I know that these are only notes for something better -- the longing to read and to be read, to experience and understand -- but I welcome all readers, all questions, all comments, all criticism, all help."
"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud."
"Learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all, have fun!