#intro

The problem with introspection is that it has no end. ↗

— Philip K. Dick

#ego #infinity #introspection #meditation #self

Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment. But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner. This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment. Today there are fewer norms that guide that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust. ↗

— David Brooks

#poetry #society #education

Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#introvert

I think that curiosity happened on these reviews where I was just a guest of the reviewer, because it introduced me to new cuisines and to the idea of cooking as a mechanism for studying other cultures and understanding other parts of the world. ↗

— Ted Allen

#cooking #cuisines #cultures #curiosity #guest

In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#any #carry #city #discipline #forbidden

Johns Hopkins introduced me to two defining events in my life: commitment to biomedical research and meeting my future wife, Mary. ↗

— Peter Agre

#commitment #defining #events #future #hopkins

In 2003, I introduced and passed The Tornado Shelters Act, which allows local governments to use Community Development Block Grant funds to construct storm shelters in manufactured housing communities. ↗

— Spencer Bachus

#allows #block #communities #community #construct

One researcher just determined that African and Indian elephants make each other sick. When a new animal or plant is introduced to a habitat bad things happen. The biggest danger to native wildlife is foreign wildlife. ↗

— Robert T. Bakker

#animal #bad #biggest #danger #determined

Know thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#introspection #religion #religion

Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#another #diseases #estimated #europeans #far