Tag: quote

• “If scientific beliefs are just a particular culture’s mythology, how come we can cure smallpox and get to the moon, and traditional cultures can’t? And if truth is just socially constructed, would you say that climate change is a myth? It’s the same with moral values. If moral values are nothing but cultural customs, would you agree that our disapproval of slavery or racial discrimination or the oppression of women is just a western fancy?”

  -Pinker, Steven Pinker: ‘The way to deal with pollution is not to rail against consumption’ (Anthony).

  dappled-things

  June 10, 2018

  quote

  constructs, cultural customs, postmodernity, quote, science, steven pinker

• What ‘no’ means, in the final analysis, is always “If you continue to do that, something you do not like will happen to you.” Otherwise it means nothing. Or worse, it means “another nonsensical nothing muttered by ignorable adults.” Or worse still, it means, “all adults are ineffectual and weak.” This is a particularly bad lesson, when every child’s destiny is to become an adult, and when most things are learned without undue personal pain are modelled or explicitly taught by adults). What does a child who ignores adults and holds them in contempt have to look forward to? Why grow up at all? And that’s the story of Peter Pan, who thinks all adults are variants of Captain Hook, tyrannical and terrified of his own mortality (think hungry crocodile with clock in his stomach).

  -Dr. Jordan Peterson, Twelve Rules for Life, 140. An interesting consideration on the origin of the Peter Pan complex, perhaps?

  dappled-things

  May 23, 2018

  quote

  adulthood, child raising, children, discipline, jordan peterson, no, peter pan complex, quote, saying no, twelve rules for life

• And yet, for Seneca, in so far as we can ever attain wisdom, it is by learning not to aggravate the world’s obstinacy through our own responses, through spasms of rage, self-pity, anxiety, bitterness, self-righteousness and paranoia. A single idea recurs throughout his work: that we best endure those frustrations which we have prepared ourselves for and understand and are hurt most by those we least expected and cannot fathom. Philosophy must reconcile us to the true dimensions of reality, and so spare us, if not frustration itself, then at least its panoply of pernicious accompanying emotions.

  -Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy, 81.

  dappled-things

  May 20, 2018

  quote

  frustration, overcoming, philosophy, quote, reality, seneca

• God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Reinhold Niebuhr 

  dappled-things

  April 2, 2018

  quote

  change, courage, inspiration, quote, serenity, wisdom

• “This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Done came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers.”

  

  -Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time. [a journey into animus]

  dappled-things

  March 19, 2018

  literature, quote

  a wrinkle in time, animus, children’s literature, fantasy, literature, quote