“Old age is youth revisited with lessons learned.” • Gregory E. Woods
“All species have gone through a long series of changes, adaptations, and, in some cases, failures. Certain species have become so prolific that they incapacitate another competing group. We have seen our own species expedite the extinction of certain birds, mammals, and the like ─ species which may, or may not have continued to flourish without human encroachment.
But I would like to infer a much different point. Nature has one universal law: the law the law of self-preservation. All species fight to the last molecule of life to defend this law. However, humans have created a species whose goal is to compete with itself ─ a very strange voluntary action. Why would we create machines that destroy the ability of average humans to work? Do the new positions created by technology bear out any higher nobility than, say, farming? Is there anything self-evident about technological efficiency? Where does one draw the line between efficiency and self-annihilation?” ─Brad Johnson, ‘The Bird that Highest’ (100)
‘Diluting religion to a non-confrontational amoebic structure failed. We can never beat the media in its battle. They choose the when, the where, and the how. And it wins every time, without exception. And do we learn? Do we take the battle to the deepest part of the human soul? No. We merge together into behemoth structures. We mimic the massive corporations we denounce. Like a dancer with the teacher, religion follows every step that the virtuals make, going so far as to make entertainment the focus and God peripheral.’
The Church’s response wasn’t unique. Educational systems dealt with media competition by reasoning ‘if we can’t get kids’ attention, we’ll change the way we teach them’. (Baruch) compared this reasoning with giving a child chocolate for breakfast, because it won’t eat bread.
“Small truths consist of replicas of larger truths and vice versa.” Baruch based this saying on the geometric principles of fractals any object contains infinitesimal replicas of that image. In other words, Baruch argued:
“If the smaller truth is feeding a child bread, the larger truth is to feed that same child a sound education and healthy spirituality.” (102)
“…let us not mistake Christianity for Christ. What is taught today does indeed cause blindness. Is there a difference between what certain churches teach today and what drove our Western world into five hundred years of intellectual bankruptcy? Christ taught enlightenment, not censorship. My God removes your blinders and lets the horses run onto freer pastures. Your Christianity dictates a path. Christ’s enlightenment opened endless paths.” (103)
“The perfect act has no consequences.” ─Bhagavad Gita
“There always a few who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off. These are the men who never become tamed under subjection; these are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from earth, such men would invent it. For them, slavery has no satisfaction, no matter how well disguised.” ─Etienne de la Boetie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
Carla Bruni
“I stand in total awe of existence. I don’t pretend to know what it’s all about.” ─Hugh Hefner, Playboy publisher
“This is the blessing of humankind, what separates us from the animals: to dream.”
“One of the great ironies in our society is that we celebrate freedom and then limit the parts of life where we should be most free.”
audrey hepburn 2
