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897 results for “tuebel”
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#Surf of #surfrock is een muziekstijl die in 1961 in Zuid-Californië is ontstaan. Aan de basis staan #DickDale & #TheDelTones en #thebelairs zij spelen instrumentale muziek in de stijl van #duaneeddy #TheFireballs en #TheVentures die de jonge beoefenaars van het surfen bij stranden doet denken aan hun sport.
Ook te horen tijdens de uitzendingen van https://stepupzorgradio.nl
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𝐀ctrice 𝐝𝐮 𝐉our
𝐀𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐚 𝐀𝐫𝐣𝐨𝐧𝐚
Actrice Guatémaltèco-Américaine Née en 1992𝐀𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐚 𝐀𝐫𝐣𝐨𝐧𝐚 est une Actrice à suivre!
#AdriaArjona #ActriceDuJour #actress #actrice #cinegenres @Cinegenres #film #cinema
#TheBelkoExperiment #PacificRimUprising #TripleFrontier #SixUnderground
#SweetGirl #Morbius #HitMan #BlinkTwice #LosFrikis #Splitsville𝐄n 𝐒avoir 𝐏lus:
https://www.instagram.com/cinegenres/ -
@RationalizedInsanity “there are more rape claims against #trump than there are #transgender women in the #NCAA”
For #fascists, this is their foot in the door. Foment fear and hate against a very small minority, then increase the size of group to hate until the #maga #truebelievers are fully aligned against all #lgbtq and #GayMarriage… and eventually all non #Christians
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Worse than #fans of #film #rushmore telling people that didn't like it, "you just don't get it."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushmore_(film)
#trueBelievers don't need to be #told !!
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https://www.europesays.com/it/380669/ SPECIALIZED. NUOVO COTTON TLR, LA PERFEZIONE SECONDO REMCO EVENEPOEL #Ciclismo #ComponentiBici #CottonTLR #Cycling #IT #Italia #Italy #Specialized #Sport #Sports #tubeless
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#341: How Radical Should You Be In Your Belief?
How radical should you be in your belief? If you believe in something, shouldn’t you aim to believe in it more? So, let’s discuss.
All of us have our ideas that we prefer over others. All of us may have our political, religious, cultural preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what we do. That’s what makes us human.
If we believe deeply that something is correct, that something is good, should we not think also that more of that is better? It’s a seductive idea and it seems logical initially. If you are X, if you believe in X, shouldn’t you believe in it more so? That seems to be the case because otherwise why would you believe in it? Is your belief really that weak that you can’t strengthen it?
So that’s the idea. And if you for some reason don’t want to fully commit, maybe you really never believed it completely. Maybe you’re not really a true believer. That’s the other part of the idea.
However, I would say this ignores certain facts about ideas, because every idea — whether it’s a religion, a philosophy, a cultural preference — typically has safeguards. When you look at all the big religions, they have some sort of clause, some sort of warning against taking it too far. Because that’s what the very idea of divinity is. That’s what the very idea of God is: that which we as human beings cannot completely understand. God is that which we cannot even approach so much that we can be certain of what God is. Because if we could, wouldn’t that mean in some way that we could become God? And that’s the very warning that most religions promote.
Believe, but don’t assume for a moment that you have all the answers.
There’s this joke that camels always look at humans in a specific way. The joke is that God has 100 names. We know 99 of them. But the camel knows all 100. And that’s why the camel looks so superior.
But that is the idea of religion. The idea of religion is a combination — as strange as this may sound — of belief and humility. We are not God. We are not everything in the universe. We are not all-knowing. We are not omnipotent. And we will never get there. So whatever you think of as God — whether you think that’s a religious idea, whether you think that’s nature, whether you think that’s the universe, whether you think that’s just the ultimate good — this idea is clear: do not pretend to be all-knowing yourself. Have some sense of humility.
Now that also goes for philosophy. You may say, I follow philosopher so-and-so. But philosophy is an ongoing conversation about wisdom — the love of wisdom; that’s what philosophia means. Each idea in philosophy lives in interaction with other ideas. Philosophy is more than just footnotes to Plato. Plato can be footnotes to Plato — if you look at the Laws and the Republic, there are two very different ideas there, and more than two.
Philosophers are typically smarter than those who follow a specific philosophy. Because every philosopher knows that in order to put out the strongest version of their idea, they have to leave some of the complications out. But there are always complications. And philosophy X always lives in some form of exchange with philosophy Y or Z or however many there are. Every idea lives in an ecosystem of ideas. It lives in relation with others.
Philosophy X may be good or better in certain respects than philosophy Y. Maybe philosophy Y is good in other aspects. But the truth emerges in the interaction between the two.
So you may believe that the individual is the source of all morality. But how far do you want to take this? Do you believe this to the complete abdication of responsibility for others? Do you believe this to the complete rejection of the state? Similarly, if you believe the state is the authority over everything else, at which point does this have to stop? At which point does the state have to even question itself as to how far it should go?
Everything costs money. Does this mean that everything should be judged by its price tag? Even though price is not a static thing — it depends on a lot of factors. Is the price tag always the value of something, or is it just our momentary expression of our social and cultural priorities? Of course there’s supply and demand which regulate that. But is that still everything? Aren’t there things where we should find some difficulty putting a price on? Aren’t there some things that we can’t really measure very well? So isn’t there a limit to this kind of positivist, materialist way of looking at things?
Equally, if we say the materialistic world doesn’t matter and we need to live in a more spiritual, contemplative state of mind — that may be true to a point, but eventually bills will have to be paid. You do live in some form of reality, and that reality means that resources typically are limited and there needs to be a prioritizing. How do you organize that?
The material and the spiritual belong together. They will always have friction between each other, but they will always complement each other. If you’re too materialistic — if you believe that only that which can be measured, only that which can be owned, only that which can have a price tag matters — you should maybe think about some more spiritual components of life. If you’re too spiritual, maybe you need to be rooted more in the fact that there’s also a materialist component of life.
If X drowns out Y, sides of X may appear that make it wrong, because you need that balance. And there are more than just two — X and Y is easier, but you could say XYZ or whatever.
So in fact the saying may be true that too much of a good thing is indeed not good. It distorts what it is.
This is why you see me frequently call for moderation. You could argue that too much moderation is also wrong — you need some passion and some intensity and some belief. Well, yes. But moderation can also be just a middle ground between these different poles. All these different ideas around us lead us to negotiate our space within them. Moderation does not mean you don’t have convictions. It means that you question at which point your convictions turn into such a radicality, into such an extreme version, that they become wrong — that they are undermined by their own conviction.
Is radicality the truest expression of an idea? No. It may be the most flamboyant, the most interesting. But it can’t survive well. If you turn too radical, too extremist, your idea may be more attractive to people who really think like you. But then look at history. Every time an idea became too radical, it fails. It has failed. No matter what the idea — because in its radicality, in its extremism, it loses its power of conviction towards those who don’t agree with you. And the number of people in the world who agree with you is always going to be punctuated by the number of people who disagree with you.
If you want to build a successful movement, if you want to build a successful approach to politics, to religion, to whatever your cultural or social idea may be, you need to convince others. You need to find ways of integrating aspects of the other into your own.
Which is why this very familiar symbol of yin and yang — masculine, feminine, black, white, dark, light — shows you these two parts, but there’s always something of the other in the bigger part. You know the symbol.
If we don’t find a way to integrate that with which we disagree — as some sense of doubt, as some sense of humility within our convictions — then our convictions will be nothing but arrogance, nothing but self-congratulatory pose, and turn out to be nothing else than solipsism: centering on yourself and that which you think defines you as the only thing that matters.
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
#2026 #balance #beliefAndHumility #camelJoke #conviction #convictionVsArrogance #criticalThinking #culturalCommentary #divinity #doubt #ecosystemOfIdeas #extremism #God #humility #ideas #ideology #individualVsState #integration #Laws #loveOfWisdom #materialism #moderation #moderationVsExtremism #philosophia #Philosophy #Plato #politicalCommentary #politicalPhilosophy #politicalTheory #positivism #priceAndValue #publicPhilosophy #radicalism #radicality #religionAndReason #Republic #selfCongratulation #solipsism #spirituality #successfulMovements #tooMuchOfAGoodThing #trueBeliever #wisdom #yinAndYang -
They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the “free for all.” They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 2, ch. 5, § 28 (1951)More about this quote: wist.info/hoffer-eric/10928/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #competition #failure #freesociety #freedom #frustrated #happiness #inferiority #liberty #selfhatred #selfloathing #truebeliever #unsuccessful
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Sugar Beets
They planted sugar beets over the dead.
#aftermathOfWar #buriedMemory #collectiveTrauma #darkGothicFiction #Demmin #DemminGermany #EastGermany #forgottenDead #Germany1945 #ghostStory #GothicHorror #gothicLiterature #gothicTale #grief #hauntedFields #haunting #historicalFiction #historicalHorror #literaryHorror #massSuicide #memoryAndSilence #moralHorror #NevermoreAndOtherShadows #PeaceGroovesFiction #PeeneRiver #postwarGermany #sugarBeetField #SugarBeets #symbolicHorror #tabooHistory #tragicHistory #warTrauma #WorldWarII
This was the first thing the old woman told me, and she said it without looking at me, as if the sentence itself were a window she dared not face.
We were standing at the edge of the field beyond Demmin, where the earth sank and rose in shallow, uneven swells. It was late autumn. The beet leaves lay dark and rubbery against the soil, wide as tongues, veined like the hands of the very old. Beyond them the river moved with the dull patience of something that had learned not to answer questions.
“You are writing a history?” she asked.
“A story,” I said.
“That is worse.”
Her name was Frau Ilse Kröger, though she had been a child when the town burned and the people went down to the water. Her coat was buttoned to the throat. Her hair, white and thin, had been pinned so tightly that her face seemed pulled backward by memory.
“You must not make ghosts of them,” she said.
“I thought perhaps they already were.”
At that she turned to me. Her eyes were pale, not weak, but faded by long endurance.
“No,” she said. “Ghosts are the dead who cannot leave. These were the living who were not allowed to remain.”
The wind moved through the beet leaves. They rustled low to the ground, not like plants, but like a crowd whispering with its face in the dirt.
I had come to Demmin because of a sentence in an old magazine, a line in a later book, a footnote beneath a national silence. Some said seven hundred. Some said a thousand. Some said more. The numbers rose and fell like bodies seen through river water. There had been war, terror, propaganda, vengeance, collapse. There had been flames in the town and soldiers in the streets and stories told so often in fear that fear itself became a door. Mothers carried children to the river. Men tied themselves to stones. Families vanished into reeds. The Peene, the Tollense, the Trebel—all waters became witnesses.
And afterward, when the new order came, the dead were inconvenient.
So they let grass grow high.
Then they plowed.
Then they planted sugar beets.
There is a peculiar obscenity in sweetness drawn from such soil.
I asked Frau Kröger if she remembered the field.
“I remember my mother’s hand,” she said. “I remember the smoke. I remember how the sky looked too low, as though God had leaned down to see and then could not bear to look any longer.”
We walked along the furrows. The earth clung to our boots in black-red lumps. Here and there the beets pushed up from the ground, pale shoulders emerging from darkness. They resembled skulls that had changed their minds and decided to become vegetables.
“Did anyone speak of it later?” I asked.
“Not aloud.”
“But in homes?”
She stopped.
“In homes most of all we did not speak.”
The field seemed to hear this and approve.
That night I stayed in a small room above an inn where the wallpaper peeled in long strips like shed skin. The radiator hissed. The window looked toward the rivers, though I could not see them, only a blackness where the land dropped away.
Near midnight, I woke to the smell of wet soil.
At first I thought I had dreamed it. But the smell thickened—earth, roots, river mud, and beneath it a faint sweetness, cloying and raw, like sugar spilled in a cellar.
Then came the sound.
Scraping.
Not at the door. Not at the window.
Under the floor.
I sat up.
The boards beneath the bed gave a soft, deliberate creak, though I had not moved. Then another. Then many small sounds together: scratching, pressing, shifting. Like roots growing upward. Like fingernails beneath wood.
I lit the lamp.
Nothing.
The room was ordinary again, ordinary in the way a corpse can be ordinary once the scream has left it.
I did not sleep. Toward dawn I looked from the window and saw, in the paling gray, a line of figures walking beyond the last houses toward the fields. They were indistinct, blurred by mist, and moved slowly, not like soldiers, not like mourners, but like people following instructions they no longer understood.
At breakfast, I asked the innkeeper whether there was a memorial nearby.
He wiped the counter though it was already clean.
“There is a stone,” he said.
“A stone?”
“For those who need stones.”
“And for those who need truth?”
He looked at me then with a kind of pity.
“Truth?” he said. “Truth is heavy. People say they want it, but mostly they want a stone small enough to walk past.”
Later I returned to the field alone.
The beets had been harvested in part. Great heaps stood near the road, pale and earthen, piled like bones awaiting judgment. A truck had left deep tracks in the mud. Crows hopped among the clods.
Near the center of the field I found a place where nothing grew.
It was not large. A rough oval of bare ground. The soil there was darker than the rest and soft despite the cold. I knelt and pressed my fingers into it. Water welled up at once.
Not rainwater.
River water.
It rose around my hand, cold and brown, though the rivers lay some distance away. I pulled back, startled. The little hollow filled silently, reflecting the sky. In its surface I saw, not my own face, but the white blur of beet roots hanging downward, though there were no plants above it.
Then a voice behind me said, “Do not dig.”
Frau Kröger stood at the edge of the furrow.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking of it.”
That was true.
She came closer, slowly, leaning on her cane. “There were men who dug after the war. Men who made lists. Men who counted what could be counted and buried what could not. But later the counting became dangerous.”
“Because it accused someone?”
“Because it accused everyone.”
The wind pressed her coat flat against her body.
“The dead asked too many questions,” she said. “Why did you believe the lies? Why did you fear more than you loved? Why did you stay silent? Why did you come too late? Why did you plant over us?”
A crow called from the beet heap.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now they ask nothing. That is worse.”
From the hollow in the ground came a faint sound like breathing.
Frau Kröger heard it too. Her face tightened.
“When I was a girl,” she said, “we stole beets from this field. Children are always hungry after wars. My brother carried one home under his coat. My mother slapped him when she saw where it came from. Not because he stole. Because he brought it into the house.”
“What happened?”
“She cooked it.”
I stared at her.
“What else could she do? We were hungry.”
Her mouth trembled. Not with tears, but with a terrible, bitter smile.
“It was sweet,” she said. “That was the worst of it.”
The hollow had widened.
Water slipped along the furrows now, thin shining lines threading through the field. The beet leaves stirred though the wind had fallen. From beneath the soil came a low murmur, not words, but the sound of many people speaking with mouths full of earth.
Frau Kröger gripped my arm.
“You wanted your story,” she whispered. “Here it is. This town did not bury the dead. It buried the question of why the living could be driven to the water. It buried fear. It buried shame. It buried the terror of armies and the poison of the Reich and the helplessness of mothers and the guilt of neighbors and the convenience of silence. Then it planted sugar over all of it and called the sweetness harvest.”
The ground shuddered.
One beet near my boot loosened itself. Its root twisted upward, slick with mud. For one instant it looked horribly like a hand.
Then another rose.
Then another.
All across the field the sugar beets began to lift from the earth, not quickly, not violently, but with the slow resolve of the dead being remembered. Soil broke. Leaves trembled. Pale roots emerged, round and blunt, each carrying clots of black mud. The heaps by the road shifted and rolled, collapsing outward.
The air filled with sweetness.
Too much sweetness.
The kind that coats the throat and makes breathing difficult.
From the direction of the river came bells. Not church bells. Smaller. Duller. As if stones were striking beneath water.
Frau Kröger began to pray, but not in words I knew. Perhaps no language survived intact in her after that year. Perhaps prayer, after such things, becomes only the soul refusing to be silent.
The water in the furrows deepened. It ran around our boots. The field had become a map of rivers, every row a tributary, every hollow a mouth.
Then I saw them.
Not ghosts exactly.
Figures in the mist, standing among the beets. Women in dark coats. Children with pale faces. Old men bent beneath invisible burdens. They did not accuse. They did not plead. They only stood where the earth had held them, gazing toward the town that had gone on living.
Their silence was unbearable.
I wanted them to speak. I wanted a curse, a revelation, a sentence to carve onto stone. But they gave none.
That was their judgment.
They had been made into numbers, then rumors, then taboo, then crops. They had been reduced to a place one passed without lowering one’s voice. Now they returned not to frighten the living, but to make evasion impossible.
Frau Kröger stepped forward into the water.
“I remember,” she said.
The figures did not move.
“I remember,” she said again, louder.
The mist thickened around her.
“I remember my mother’s hand. I remember smoke. I remember the river. I remember the field. I remember that we ate what grew here. I remember that we did not speak. I remember.”
At that, the sweetness in the air broke.
Not vanished. Broke.
Like a fever.
Like a spell.
The beet roots sank back into the soil. The water withdrew into the furrows. The figures faded, though their absence remained visible, like the shape left on a wall after a picture is removed.
Frau Kröger stood very still.
When I helped her back to the road, she was weeping soundlessly.
“Will you write it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then do not make it beautiful.”
I looked across the field. Dawn had begun to rise, gray and reluctant. The town lay beyond us, roofs dark, windows catching the first weak light. Somewhere a church bell rang the hour. Somewhere bread was being sliced. Somewhere children were waking without knowing what slept beneath the ground that fed them.
“I don’t know how to write such a thing without beauty,” I said.
She nodded, as if this were the oldest failure of language.
“Then make the beauty ashamed of itself.”
Years later, when I think of Demmin, I do not first think of death.
I think of sugar.
White crystals in a bowl. Sweetness stirred into coffee. Cakes dusted for weddings. Beet fields under a low northern sky. The ordinary miracle by which earth becomes food.
And I think of what the earth remembers when we do not.
For every country has its sugar beet field.
Every people has some place where the dead were covered, where the official mouth closed, where the plow passed over grief and called it necessity. Every age plants something over its horror and prays the harvest will be useful.
But beneath the sweetness, the roots know.
Beneath the furrows, the waters wait.
And sometimes, when the wind lies down and the mist comes low over Demmin, the field begins to whisper—not to the dead, who already know, but to the living, who still pretend they do not:
Remember us before we rise. -
134 Miles Boston to Provincetown on the bike!
Great fun, despite all three of us getting punctures. My tubeless setup healed itself within 15 mins or so. My friend wasn't so lucky. It was too big for sealant. Thankfully I have the plug.
It was a very hot day to ride this long. Elsa seemed to be not mentally ready for this ride to be so hard. Fact is no matter how strong you are, you start to suffer at some point. To some people it's around 70-80 miles or even 120 miles. To me it's around 100 miles. But a hotdog really helped :)
A lot of cicadas on the cape! Is this year when they come out partying every 17 years?
#CapeCod #Provincetown #Boston #ride #biketoot #bike #cycling #200k #endurance
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The Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow" hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 1, 1976.
#Music, #TheBellamyBrothers, #70s, #70sMusic, #1970s, #1970sMusic
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 1, ch. 2, § 8 (1951)More about this quote: wist.info/hoffer-eric/10594/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #cause #devotion #faith #holiness #sacred #selfblame #selfconfidence #selfdoubt #selfquestioning #selfreproach #truebeliever
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Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.” It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 2, ch. 5, § 26 (1951)More about this quote: wist.info/hoffer-eric/10751/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #burden #cause #collectiveguilt #control #escape #freedom #individual #movement #obedience #orders #responsibility #selfcontempt #selfdeprecation #selfdoubt #selfimage #selfliberation #selfopinion #selfregard #selfrespect #selfresponsibility #truebeliever
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The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-05), “Notes on Nationalism,” Polemic Magazine (1945-10)More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/46375/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #divinetruth #history #mythmaking #past #propaganda #reality #revisionism #truebeliever #truth
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The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-05), “Notes on Nationalism,” Polemic Magazine (1945-10)More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/46375/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #divinetruth #history #mythmaking #past #propaganda #reality #revisionism #truebeliever #truth
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The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-05), “Notes on Nationalism,” Polemic Magazine (1945-10)More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/46375/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #divinetruth #history #mythmaking #past #propaganda #reality #revisionism #truebeliever #truth
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The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-05), “Notes on Nationalism,” Polemic Magazine (1945-10)More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/46375/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #divinetruth #history #mythmaking #past #propaganda #reality #revisionism #truebeliever #truth
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The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-05), “Notes on Nationalism,” Polemic Magazine (1945-10)More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/46375/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #divinetruth #history #mythmaking #past #propaganda #reality #revisionism #truebeliever #truth
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Thursday Five list from @neurothing brings us a suggestion from @alicemcalicepants. Songs we'll never get sick of, aka The Beloved Tune! LET'S GO!
ANRI "Windy Summer"
https://songwhip.com/anri/windy-summerAqua "Lollipop (Candyman)"
https://songwhip.com/aqua/lollipopcandymanBone Thugs~N~Harmony "1st of Tha Month"
https://songwhip.com/bone-thugs-n-harmony/1stofthamonthFlatlinerz "Live Evil"
https://songwhip.com/theflatlinerz/live-evilS.E.S "Love"
https://songwhip.com/ses/love#ThursdayFiveList #TheBelovedTune #Anri #Aqua #BoneThugsNHarmony #Flatlinerz #SES
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"Not only do both find cases, they find more cases, fatalities I hadn’t heard of and that were not reported by the media. How many more have escaped notice?" —Paul Collins for The Believer https://www.thebeliever.net/the-death-of-a-superman/?src=longreads #donations #emergency #design #longreads #homelessness #invisibility
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#341: How Radical Should You Be In Your Belief?
How radical should you be in your belief? If you believe in something, shouldn’t you aim to believe in it more? So, let’s discuss.
All of us have our ideas that we prefer over others. All of us may have our political, religious, cultural preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what we do. That’s what makes us human.
If we believe deeply that something is correct, that something is good, should we not think also that more of that is better? It’s a seductive idea and it seems logical initially. If you are X, if you believe in X, shouldn’t you believe in it more so? That seems to be the case because otherwise why would you believe in it? Is your belief really that weak that you can’t strengthen it?
So that’s the idea. And if you for some reason don’t want to fully commit, maybe you really never believed it completely. Maybe you’re not really a true believer. That’s the other part of the idea.
However, I would say this ignores certain facts about ideas, because every idea — whether it’s a religion, a philosophy, a cultural preference — typically has safeguards. When you look at all the big religions, they have some sort of clause, some sort of warning against taking it too far. Because that’s what the very idea of divinity is. That’s what the very idea of God is: that which we as human beings cannot completely understand. God is that which we cannot even approach so much that we can be certain of what God is. Because if we could, wouldn’t that mean in some way that we could become God? And that’s the very warning that most religions promote.
Believe, but don’t assume for a moment that you have all the answers.
There’s this joke that camels always look at humans in a specific way. The joke is that God has 100 names. We know 99 of them. But the camel knows all 100. And that’s why the camel looks so superior.
But that is the idea of religion. The idea of religion is a combination — as strange as this may sound — of belief and humility. We are not God. We are not everything in the universe. We are not all-knowing. We are not omnipotent. And we will never get there. So whatever you think of as God — whether you think that’s a religious idea, whether you think that’s nature, whether you think that’s the universe, whether you think that’s just the ultimate good — this idea is clear: do not pretend to be all-knowing yourself. Have some sense of humility.
Now that also goes for philosophy. You may say, I follow philosopher so-and-so. But philosophy is an ongoing conversation about wisdom — the love of wisdom; that’s what philosophia means. Each idea in philosophy lives in interaction with other ideas. Philosophy is more than just footnotes to Plato. Plato can be footnotes to Plato — if you look at the Laws and the Republic, there are two very different ideas there, and more than two.
Philosophers are typically smarter than those who follow a specific philosophy. Because every philosopher knows that in order to put out the strongest version of their idea, they have to leave some of the complications out. But there are always complications. And philosophy X always lives in some form of exchange with philosophy Y or Z or however many there are. Every idea lives in an ecosystem of ideas. It lives in relation with others.
Philosophy X may be good or better in certain respects than philosophy Y. Maybe philosophy Y is good in other aspects. But the truth emerges in the interaction between the two.
So you may believe that the individual is the source of all morality. But how far do you want to take this? Do you believe this to the complete abdication of responsibility for others? Do you believe this to the complete rejection of the state? Similarly, if you believe the state is the authority over everything else, at which point does this have to stop? At which point does the state have to even question itself as to how far it should go?
Everything costs money. Does this mean that everything should be judged by its price tag? Even though price is not a static thing — it depends on a lot of factors. Is the price tag always the value of something, or is it just our momentary expression of our social and cultural priorities? Of course there’s supply and demand which regulate that. But is that still everything? Aren’t there things where we should find some difficulty putting a price on? Aren’t there some things that we can’t really measure very well? So isn’t there a limit to this kind of positivist, materialist way of looking at things?
Equally, if we say the materialistic world doesn’t matter and we need to live in a more spiritual, contemplative state of mind — that may be true to a point, but eventually bills will have to be paid. You do live in some form of reality, and that reality means that resources typically are limited and there needs to be a prioritizing. How do you organize that?
The material and the spiritual belong together. They will always have friction between each other, but they will always complement each other. If you’re too materialistic — if you believe that only that which can be measured, only that which can be owned, only that which can have a price tag matters — you should maybe think about some more spiritual components of life. If you’re too spiritual, maybe you need to be rooted more in the fact that there’s also a materialist component of life.
If X drowns out Y, sides of X may appear that make it wrong, because you need that balance. And there are more than just two — X and Y is easier, but you could say XYZ or whatever.
So in fact the saying may be true that too much of a good thing is indeed not good. It distorts what it is.
This is why you see me frequently call for moderation. You could argue that too much moderation is also wrong — you need some passion and some intensity and some belief. Well, yes. But moderation can also be just a middle ground between these different poles. All these different ideas around us lead us to negotiate our space within them. Moderation does not mean you don’t have convictions. It means that you question at which point your convictions turn into such a radicality, into such an extreme version, that they become wrong — that they are undermined by their own conviction.
Is radicality the truest expression of an idea? No. It may be the most flamboyant, the most interesting. But it can’t survive well. If you turn too radical, too extremist, your idea may be more attractive to people who really think like you. But then look at history. Every time an idea became too radical, it fails. It has failed. No matter what the idea — because in its radicality, in its extremism, it loses its power of conviction towards those who don’t agree with you. And the number of people in the world who agree with you is always going to be punctuated by the number of people who disagree with you.
If you want to build a successful movement, if you want to build a successful approach to politics, to religion, to whatever your cultural or social idea may be, you need to convince others. You need to find ways of integrating aspects of the other into your own.
Which is why this very familiar symbol of yin and yang — masculine, feminine, black, white, dark, light — shows you these two parts, but there’s always something of the other in the bigger part. You know the symbol.
If we don’t find a way to integrate that with which we disagree — as some sense of doubt, as some sense of humility within our convictions — then our convictions will be nothing but arrogance, nothing but self-congratulatory pose, and turn out to be nothing else than solipsism: centering on yourself and that which you think defines you as the only thing that matters.
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
#2026 #balance #beliefAndHumility #camelJoke #conviction #convictionVsArrogance #criticalThinking #culturalCommentary #divinity #doubt #ecosystemOfIdeas #extremism #God #humility #ideas #ideology #individualVsState #integration #Laws #loveOfWisdom #materialism #moderation #moderationVsExtremism #philosophia #Philosophy #Plato #politicalCommentary #politicalPhilosophy #politicalTheory #positivism #priceAndValue #publicPhilosophy #radicalism #radicality #religionAndReason #Republic #selfCongratulation #solipsism #spirituality #successfulMovements #tooMuchOfAGoodThing #trueBeliever #wisdom #yinAndYang -
#341: How Radical Should You Be In Your Belief?
How radical should you be in your belief? If you believe in something, shouldn’t you aim to believe in it more? So, let’s discuss.
All of us have our ideas that we prefer over others. All of us may have our political, religious, cultural preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what we do. That’s what makes us human.
If we believe deeply that something is correct, that something is good, should we not think also that more of that is better? It’s a seductive idea and it seems logical initially. If you are X, if you believe in X, shouldn’t you believe in it more so? That seems to be the case because otherwise why would you believe in it? Is your belief really that weak that you can’t strengthen it?
So that’s the idea. And if you for some reason don’t want to fully commit, maybe you really never believed it completely. Maybe you’re not really a true believer. That’s the other part of the idea.
However, I would say this ignores certain facts about ideas, because every idea — whether it’s a religion, a philosophy, a cultural preference — typically has safeguards. When you look at all the big religions, they have some sort of clause, some sort of warning against taking it too far. Because that’s what the very idea of divinity is. That’s what the very idea of God is: that which we as human beings cannot completely understand. God is that which we cannot even approach so much that we can be certain of what God is. Because if we could, wouldn’t that mean in some way that we could become God? And that’s the very warning that most religions promote.
Believe, but don’t assume for a moment that you have all the answers.
There’s this joke that camels always look at humans in a specific way. The joke is that God has 100 names. We know 99 of them. But the camel knows all 100. And that’s why the camel looks so superior.
But that is the idea of religion. The idea of religion is a combination — as strange as this may sound — of belief and humility. We are not God. We are not everything in the universe. We are not all-knowing. We are not omnipotent. And we will never get there. So whatever you think of as God — whether you think that’s a religious idea, whether you think that’s nature, whether you think that’s the universe, whether you think that’s just the ultimate good — this idea is clear: do not pretend to be all-knowing yourself. Have some sense of humility.
Now that also goes for philosophy. You may say, I follow philosopher so-and-so. But philosophy is an ongoing conversation about wisdom — the love of wisdom; that’s what philosophia means. Each idea in philosophy lives in interaction with other ideas. Philosophy is more than just footnotes to Plato. Plato can be footnotes to Plato — if you look at the Laws and the Republic, there are two very different ideas there, and more than two.
Philosophers are typically smarter than those who follow a specific philosophy. Because every philosopher knows that in order to put out the strongest version of their idea, they have to leave some of the complications out. But there are always complications. And philosophy X always lives in some form of exchange with philosophy Y or Z or however many there are. Every idea lives in an ecosystem of ideas. It lives in relation with others.
Philosophy X may be good or better in certain respects than philosophy Y. Maybe philosophy Y is good in other aspects. But the truth emerges in the interaction between the two.
So you may believe that the individual is the source of all morality. But how far do you want to take this? Do you believe this to the complete abdication of responsibility for others? Do you believe this to the complete rejection of the state? Similarly, if you believe the state is the authority over everything else, at which point does this have to stop? At which point does the state have to even question itself as to how far it should go?
Everything costs money. Does this mean that everything should be judged by its price tag? Even though price is not a static thing — it depends on a lot of factors. Is the price tag always the value of something, or is it just our momentary expression of our social and cultural priorities? Of course there’s supply and demand which regulate that. But is that still everything? Aren’t there things where we should find some difficulty putting a price on? Aren’t there some things that we can’t really measure very well? So isn’t there a limit to this kind of positivist, materialist way of looking at things?
Equally, if we say the materialistic world doesn’t matter and we need to live in a more spiritual, contemplative state of mind — that may be true to a point, but eventually bills will have to be paid. You do live in some form of reality, and that reality means that resources typically are limited and there needs to be a prioritizing. How do you organize that?
The material and the spiritual belong together. They will always have friction between each other, but they will always complement each other. If you’re too materialistic — if you believe that only that which can be measured, only that which can be owned, only that which can have a price tag matters — you should maybe think about some more spiritual components of life. If you’re too spiritual, maybe you need to be rooted more in the fact that there’s also a materialist component of life.
If X drowns out Y, sides of X may appear that make it wrong, because you need that balance. And there are more than just two — X and Y is easier, but you could say XYZ or whatever.
So in fact the saying may be true that too much of a good thing is indeed not good. It distorts what it is.
This is why you see me frequently call for moderation. You could argue that too much moderation is also wrong — you need some passion and some intensity and some belief. Well, yes. But moderation can also be just a middle ground between these different poles. All these different ideas around us lead us to negotiate our space within them. Moderation does not mean you don’t have convictions. It means that you question at which point your convictions turn into such a radicality, into such an extreme version, that they become wrong — that they are undermined by their own conviction.
Is radicality the truest expression of an idea? No. It may be the most flamboyant, the most interesting. But it can’t survive well. If you turn too radical, too extremist, your idea may be more attractive to people who really think like you. But then look at history. Every time an idea became too radical, it fails. It has failed. No matter what the idea — because in its radicality, in its extremism, it loses its power of conviction towards those who don’t agree with you. And the number of people in the world who agree with you is always going to be punctuated by the number of people who disagree with you.
If you want to build a successful movement, if you want to build a successful approach to politics, to religion, to whatever your cultural or social idea may be, you need to convince others. You need to find ways of integrating aspects of the other into your own.
Which is why this very familiar symbol of yin and yang — masculine, feminine, black, white, dark, light — shows you these two parts, but there’s always something of the other in the bigger part. You know the symbol.
If we don’t find a way to integrate that with which we disagree — as some sense of doubt, as some sense of humility within our convictions — then our convictions will be nothing but arrogance, nothing but self-congratulatory pose, and turn out to be nothing else than solipsism: centering on yourself and that which you think defines you as the only thing that matters.
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
#2026 #balance #beliefAndHumility #camelJoke #conviction #convictionVsArrogance #criticalThinking #culturalCommentary #divinity #doubt #ecosystemOfIdeas #extremism #God #humility #ideas #ideology #individualVsState #integration #Laws #loveOfWisdom #materialism #moderation #moderationVsExtremism #philosophia #Philosophy #Plato #politicalCommentary #politicalPhilosophy #politicalTheory #positivism #priceAndValue #publicPhilosophy #radicalism #radicality #religionAndReason #Republic #selfCongratulation #solipsism #spirituality #successfulMovements #tooMuchOfAGoodThing #trueBeliever #wisdom #yinAndYang -
#341: How Radical Should You Be In Your Belief?
How radical should you be in your belief? If you believe in something, shouldn’t you aim to believe in it more? So, let’s discuss.
All of us have our ideas that we prefer over others. All of us may have our political, religious, cultural preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what we do. That’s what makes us human.
If we believe deeply that something is correct, that something is good, should we not think also that more of that is better? It’s a seductive idea and it seems logical initially. If you are X, if you believe in X, shouldn’t you believe in it more so? That seems to be the case because otherwise why would you believe in it? Is your belief really that weak that you can’t strengthen it?
So that’s the idea. And if you for some reason don’t want to fully commit, maybe you really never believed it completely. Maybe you’re not really a true believer. That’s the other part of the idea.
However, I would say this ignores certain facts about ideas, because every idea — whether it’s a religion, a philosophy, a cultural preference — typically has safeguards. When you look at all the big religions, they have some sort of clause, some sort of warning against taking it too far. Because that’s what the very idea of divinity is. That’s what the very idea of God is: that which we as human beings cannot completely understand. God is that which we cannot even approach so much that we can be certain of what God is. Because if we could, wouldn’t that mean in some way that we could become God? And that’s the very warning that most religions promote.
Believe, but don’t assume for a moment that you have all the answers.
There’s this joke that camels always look at humans in a specific way. The joke is that God has 100 names. We know 99 of them. But the camel knows all 100. And that’s why the camel looks so superior.
But that is the idea of religion. The idea of religion is a combination — as strange as this may sound — of belief and humility. We are not God. We are not everything in the universe. We are not all-knowing. We are not omnipotent. And we will never get there. So whatever you think of as God — whether you think that’s a religious idea, whether you think that’s nature, whether you think that’s the universe, whether you think that’s just the ultimate good — this idea is clear: do not pretend to be all-knowing yourself. Have some sense of humility.
Now that also goes for philosophy. You may say, I follow philosopher so-and-so. But philosophy is an ongoing conversation about wisdom — the love of wisdom; that’s what philosophia means. Each idea in philosophy lives in interaction with other ideas. Philosophy is more than just footnotes to Plato. Plato can be footnotes to Plato — if you look at the Laws and the Republic, there are two very different ideas there, and more than two.
Philosophers are typically smarter than those who follow a specific philosophy. Because every philosopher knows that in order to put out the strongest version of their idea, they have to leave some of the complications out. But there are always complications. And philosophy X always lives in some form of exchange with philosophy Y or Z or however many there are. Every idea lives in an ecosystem of ideas. It lives in relation with others.
Philosophy X may be good or better in certain respects than philosophy Y. Maybe philosophy Y is good in other aspects. But the truth emerges in the interaction between the two.
So you may believe that the individual is the source of all morality. But how far do you want to take this? Do you believe this to the complete abdication of responsibility for others? Do you believe this to the complete rejection of the state? Similarly, if you believe the state is the authority over everything else, at which point does this have to stop? At which point does the state have to even question itself as to how far it should go?
Everything costs money. Does this mean that everything should be judged by its price tag? Even though price is not a static thing — it depends on a lot of factors. Is the price tag always the value of something, or is it just our momentary expression of our social and cultural priorities? Of course there’s supply and demand which regulate that. But is that still everything? Aren’t there things where we should find some difficulty putting a price on? Aren’t there some things that we can’t really measure very well? So isn’t there a limit to this kind of positivist, materialist way of looking at things?
Equally, if we say the materialistic world doesn’t matter and we need to live in a more spiritual, contemplative state of mind — that may be true to a point, but eventually bills will have to be paid. You do live in some form of reality, and that reality means that resources typically are limited and there needs to be a prioritizing. How do you organize that?
The material and the spiritual belong together. They will always have friction between each other, but they will always complement each other. If you’re too materialistic — if you believe that only that which can be measured, only that which can be owned, only that which can have a price tag matters — you should maybe think about some more spiritual components of life. If you’re too spiritual, maybe you need to be rooted more in the fact that there’s also a materialist component of life.
If X drowns out Y, sides of X may appear that make it wrong, because you need that balance. And there are more than just two — X and Y is easier, but you could say XYZ or whatever.
So in fact the saying may be true that too much of a good thing is indeed not good. It distorts what it is.
This is why you see me frequently call for moderation. You could argue that too much moderation is also wrong — you need some passion and some intensity and some belief. Well, yes. But moderation can also be just a middle ground between these different poles. All these different ideas around us lead us to negotiate our space within them. Moderation does not mean you don’t have convictions. It means that you question at which point your convictions turn into such a radicality, into such an extreme version, that they become wrong — that they are undermined by their own conviction.
Is radicality the truest expression of an idea? No. It may be the most flamboyant, the most interesting. But it can’t survive well. If you turn too radical, too extremist, your idea may be more attractive to people who really think like you. But then look at history. Every time an idea became too radical, it fails. It has failed. No matter what the idea — because in its radicality, in its extremism, it loses its power of conviction towards those who don’t agree with you. And the number of people in the world who agree with you is always going to be punctuated by the number of people who disagree with you.
If you want to build a successful movement, if you want to build a successful approach to politics, to religion, to whatever your cultural or social idea may be, you need to convince others. You need to find ways of integrating aspects of the other into your own.
Which is why this very familiar symbol of yin and yang — masculine, feminine, black, white, dark, light — shows you these two parts, but there’s always something of the other in the bigger part. You know the symbol.
If we don’t find a way to integrate that with which we disagree — as some sense of doubt, as some sense of humility within our convictions — then our convictions will be nothing but arrogance, nothing but self-congratulatory pose, and turn out to be nothing else than solipsism: centering on yourself and that which you think defines you as the only thing that matters.
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
#2026 #balance #beliefAndHumility #camelJoke #conviction #convictionVsArrogance #criticalThinking #culturalCommentary #divinity #doubt #ecosystemOfIdeas #extremism #God #humility #ideas #ideology #individualVsState #integration #Laws #loveOfWisdom #materialism #moderation #moderationVsExtremism #philosophia #Philosophy #Plato #politicalCommentary #politicalPhilosophy #politicalTheory #positivism #priceAndValue #publicPhilosophy #radicalism #radicality #religionAndReason #Republic #selfCongratulation #solipsism #spirituality #successfulMovements #tooMuchOfAGoodThing #trueBeliever #wisdom #yinAndYang -
#341: How Radical Should You Be In Your Belief?
How radical should you be in your belief? If you believe in something, shouldn’t you aim to believe in it more? So, let’s discuss.
All of us have our ideas that we prefer over others. All of us may have our political, religious, cultural preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what we do. That’s what makes us human.
If we believe deeply that something is correct, that something is good, should we not think also that more of that is better? It’s a seductive idea and it seems logical initially. If you are X, if you believe in X, shouldn’t you believe in it more so? That seems to be the case because otherwise why would you believe in it? Is your belief really that weak that you can’t strengthen it?
So that’s the idea. And if you for some reason don’t want to fully commit, maybe you really never believed it completely. Maybe you’re not really a true believer. That’s the other part of the idea.
However, I would say this ignores certain facts about ideas, because every idea — whether it’s a religion, a philosophy, a cultural preference — typically has safeguards. When you look at all the big religions, they have some sort of clause, some sort of warning against taking it too far. Because that’s what the very idea of divinity is. That’s what the very idea of God is: that which we as human beings cannot completely understand. God is that which we cannot even approach so much that we can be certain of what God is. Because if we could, wouldn’t that mean in some way that we could become God? And that’s the very warning that most religions promote.
Believe, but don’t assume for a moment that you have all the answers.
There’s this joke that camels always look at humans in a specific way. The joke is that God has 100 names. We know 99 of them. But the camel knows all 100. And that’s why the camel looks so superior.
But that is the idea of religion. The idea of religion is a combination — as strange as this may sound — of belief and humility. We are not God. We are not everything in the universe. We are not all-knowing. We are not omnipotent. And we will never get there. So whatever you think of as God — whether you think that’s a religious idea, whether you think that’s nature, whether you think that’s the universe, whether you think that’s just the ultimate good — this idea is clear: do not pretend to be all-knowing yourself. Have some sense of humility.
Now that also goes for philosophy. You may say, I follow philosopher so-and-so. But philosophy is an ongoing conversation about wisdom — the love of wisdom; that’s what philosophia means. Each idea in philosophy lives in interaction with other ideas. Philosophy is more than just footnotes to Plato. Plato can be footnotes to Plato — if you look at the Laws and the Republic, there are two very different ideas there, and more than two.
Philosophers are typically smarter than those who follow a specific philosophy. Because every philosopher knows that in order to put out the strongest version of their idea, they have to leave some of the complications out. But there are always complications. And philosophy X always lives in some form of exchange with philosophy Y or Z or however many there are. Every idea lives in an ecosystem of ideas. It lives in relation with others.
Philosophy X may be good or better in certain respects than philosophy Y. Maybe philosophy Y is good in other aspects. But the truth emerges in the interaction between the two.
So you may believe that the individual is the source of all morality. But how far do you want to take this? Do you believe this to the complete abdication of responsibility for others? Do you believe this to the complete rejection of the state? Similarly, if you believe the state is the authority over everything else, at which point does this have to stop? At which point does the state have to even question itself as to how far it should go?
Everything costs money. Does this mean that everything should be judged by its price tag? Even though price is not a static thing — it depends on a lot of factors. Is the price tag always the value of something, or is it just our momentary expression of our social and cultural priorities? Of course there’s supply and demand which regulate that. But is that still everything? Aren’t there things where we should find some difficulty putting a price on? Aren’t there some things that we can’t really measure very well? So isn’t there a limit to this kind of positivist, materialist way of looking at things?
Equally, if we say the materialistic world doesn’t matter and we need to live in a more spiritual, contemplative state of mind — that may be true to a point, but eventually bills will have to be paid. You do live in some form of reality, and that reality means that resources typically are limited and there needs to be a prioritizing. How do you organize that?
The material and the spiritual belong together. They will always have friction between each other, but they will always complement each other. If you’re too materialistic — if you believe that only that which can be measured, only that which can be owned, only that which can have a price tag matters — you should maybe think about some more spiritual components of life. If you’re too spiritual, maybe you need to be rooted more in the fact that there’s also a materialist component of life.
If X drowns out Y, sides of X may appear that make it wrong, because you need that balance. And there are more than just two — X and Y is easier, but you could say XYZ or whatever.
So in fact the saying may be true that too much of a good thing is indeed not good. It distorts what it is.
This is why you see me frequently call for moderation. You could argue that too much moderation is also wrong — you need some passion and some intensity and some belief. Well, yes. But moderation can also be just a middle ground between these different poles. All these different ideas around us lead us to negotiate our space within them. Moderation does not mean you don’t have convictions. It means that you question at which point your convictions turn into such a radicality, into such an extreme version, that they become wrong — that they are undermined by their own conviction.
Is radicality the truest expression of an idea? No. It may be the most flamboyant, the most interesting. But it can’t survive well. If you turn too radical, too extremist, your idea may be more attractive to people who really think like you. But then look at history. Every time an idea became too radical, it fails. It has failed. No matter what the idea — because in its radicality, in its extremism, it loses its power of conviction towards those who don’t agree with you. And the number of people in the world who agree with you is always going to be punctuated by the number of people who disagree with you.
If you want to build a successful movement, if you want to build a successful approach to politics, to religion, to whatever your cultural or social idea may be, you need to convince others. You need to find ways of integrating aspects of the other into your own.
Which is why this very familiar symbol of yin and yang — masculine, feminine, black, white, dark, light — shows you these two parts, but there’s always something of the other in the bigger part. You know the symbol.
If we don’t find a way to integrate that with which we disagree — as some sense of doubt, as some sense of humility within our convictions — then our convictions will be nothing but arrogance, nothing but self-congratulatory pose, and turn out to be nothing else than solipsism: centering on yourself and that which you think defines you as the only thing that matters.
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
#2026 #balance #beliefAndHumility #camelJoke #conviction #convictionVsArrogance #criticalThinking #culturalCommentary #divinity #doubt #ecosystemOfIdeas #extremism #God #humility #ideas #ideology #individualVsState #integration #Laws #loveOfWisdom #materialism #moderation #moderationVsExtremism #philosophia #Philosophy #Plato #politicalCommentary #politicalPhilosophy #politicalTheory #positivism #priceAndValue #publicPhilosophy #radicalism #radicality #religionAndReason #Republic #selfCongratulation #solipsism #spirituality #successfulMovements #tooMuchOfAGoodThing #trueBeliever #wisdom #yinAndYang -
I'm curious... it's a tinkered with Trolley Problem from the film, The Belko Experiment.
1. You work in a large office block and, as you and 79 of your co-workers arrive for the day, you are told via an intercom that you have 30 minutes to kill two people by any means. If you don't, the tracker devices that you all (including you) have implanted at the base of your skull will implode and kill 4 of you - what do you do?
2. After seeing 4 of your co-workers be killed when their trackers explode (you ignored the directive to kill 2 of you all), you are told that you now have 2 hours to kill 30 people. If you don't, the tracker devices that you all (including you) have implanted at the base of your skulls will implode and kill 60 of you - what do you do?
#Poll #PleaseShare #curious #movie #TheBelkoExperiment #TrolleyProblem
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"Danke dir, aber freuen tue ich mich nicht."
Nacht der gestrigen Tubeless-Montage für einen Freund nun der nächste Freundschaftsdienst für einen anderen.
Eigentlich sollte in der Abenddämmerung nur der an der Seitenwand "explodierte" Billig-Mantel inkl. Schlauch getauscht werden, doch dann schlich sich während der Montage eine heraus gebrochene Speiche ins Bild :o(
#fahrrad #fedibikes #biketooter #ebike #citybike #speiche #speichenbruch
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Ich gebe #The Belko Experiment (2016) ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ Sterne. #watched #movie #trakt #show #rating #film https://trakt.tv/movies/the-belko-experiment-2016 #TheBelkoExperiment #trakt
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@yianiris Unfortunately, the US isn't amont the #EmergingEconomies in the #GlobalSouth #DevelopingCountries, benefiting from #TheBeltAndRoadInitiative.
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Tại sao vỏ Camel không ruột lại là lựa chọn thông minh cho người mới sở hữu ô tô?
https://marketplace.tripmap.vn/product/vo-camel-khong-ruot-tubeless-size-nho-6070-va-80
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Kick off 50 Weeks of Karloff with Episode 1: The Bells! Robin explores Boris Karloff's first horror film with passion, trivia and film-history goodness. A must-watch for classic horror fans! #BorisKarloff #TheBells #ClassicHorror #FilmHistory #MovieReview #Horror #English
https://video.caruso.one/videos/watch/781ce309-813f-4e9b-aa86-d931a5ef7d24 -
Tubeless X-Ray Runs on Patience - Every time we check in on [Project326], he’s doing something different with X-rays... - https://hackaday.com/2025/10/12/tubeless-x-ray-runs-on-patience/ #americium-241 #science #x-ray