#my

In times of war or peace the US will gladly pay a man to fail should his heart be in it, a small shimmering proof of the American dream. ↗

— Jonathan Culver

#army #failure #soldiers #united-states #usa

Something like missionary reductionism has happened to the internet with the rise of web 2.0. The strangeness is being leached away by the mush-making process. Individual web pages as they first appeared in the early 1990S had the flavor of personhood. MySpace preserved some of that flavor, though a process of regularized formatting had begun. Facebook went further, organizing people into multiple-choice identities, while Wikipedia seeks to erase point of view entirely. If a church or government were doing these things, it would feel authoritarian, but when technologists are the culprits, we seem hip, fresh, and inventive. People will accept ideas presented in technological form that would be abhorrent in any other form. It is utterly strange to hear my many old friends in the world of digital culture claim to be the true sons of the Renaissance without realizing that using computers to reduce individual expression is a primitive, retrograde activity, no matter how sophisticated your tools are. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#facebook #internet #myspace #technology #web

Is this your bedroom?" she asked, and turned to look at him. Myrnin straightened and jammed the big red floppy hat back on his head. The feathers waved back and forth. "Don't get any ideas," he said. "I'm far too young and innocent for that kind of thinking. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#ghost-town #myrnin #ghost

Oh, Claire," he said. "You think me a far better man than I am. That's kind, and flattering." "Are you saying that you -" "Doughnuts!" Myrnin interrupted her and darted away, to zip back in seconds with an open box. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#doughnuts #ghost-town #morganville-vampires #myrnin #rachel-caine

Why are you here?" "To fetch the woman I cut from the veil of the rock." “Why did you cut?" "To send her spirit out, so that she would come to make the child, for me to teach to dance and sing and dream, to free the beasts within the rock to fill the world." “Have you found her?" "She is not here. There are only people horrible to see." “Where are your stories?" said the other. "I cannot tell them. My head is a cloud. ↗

— Alan Garner

#myth #where-are-your-stories #dreams

I won't compete with anybody. I love to compete with my own body. When God closes a door against me, I should not attempt to bang on it. And if God gives me a key to open a door, I should not misuse that key! ↗

— Israelmore Ayivor

#aim-high #big-dream #close #compete #competition

What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#mythology #education

We are against ignorance. We feel that you have to educate yourself, no matter what the situation is. People who refuse to educate themselves - people who refuse to find out what something is about, that they're frightened of - find comfort in being ignorant.” --Zeena Schreck Interview for KJTV-1990 ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#fear #fear-of-unknown #ignorance #independent-thinking #individuality

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#literature #mystery #education

The mature fruit of mystagogy is an awareness that one's life is being progressively transformed by the holy mysteries being celebrated. The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#christian-witness #mystagogy #mystery #education