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“Over thousands of years of history, the Western world wrapped a dreamlike fantasy about the nature of Evil around its central religious core. That fantasy had a protagonist, an adversarial personality absolutely dedicated to the corruption of being ... Give it life in the figure of Satan, Lucifer the light bearer. Lucifer's primal temptation and its immediate consequences - he opposed with ambitious aim against the throne and monarchy of God; raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud ...
Lucifer, the spirit of reason was the most wondrous angel brought forth from the Void by God. Reason is something alive; it lives in all of us. It's older than any of us; it's best understood as a personality, not a faculty. It has its aims and its temptations and its weaknesses. It flies higher and sees farther than any other spirit. But reason falls in love with itself, and worse, it falls in love with its own productions. It elevates them and worships them as absolutes.
... Lucifer is therefore, the spirit of totalitarianism.
It is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories, nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown, but most importantly, it means denial of the necessity for courageous individual confrontation with being.
Willingness to learn from what you don't know - that is faith in the possibility of human transformation. That is faith in the sacrifice of the current self for the self that could be. The totalitarian denies the necessity for the individual to take ultimate responsibility for being.
Totalitarian means everything that needs to be discovered has been discovered. Everything will unfold precisely as planned. All problems will vanish forever once the perfect system is accepted ... Communism was attractive not so much to oppressed workers but to intellectuals, to those whose arrogant, pride and intellect assured them, they were always right.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Lucifer, the spirit of reason was the most wondrous angel brought forth from the Void by God. Reason is something alive; it lives in all of us. It's older than any of us; it's best understood as a personality, not a faculty. It has its aims and its temptations and its weaknesses. It flies higher and sees farther than any other spirit. But reason falls in love with itself, and worse, it falls in love with its own productions. It elevates them and worships them as absolutes.
... Lucifer is therefore, the spirit of totalitarianism.
It is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories, nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown, but most importantly, it means denial of the necessity for courageous individual confrontation with being.
Willingness to learn from what you don't know - that is faith in the possibility of human transformation. That is faith in the sacrifice of the current self for the self that could be. The totalitarian denies the necessity for the individual to take ultimate responsibility for being.
Totalitarian means everything that needs to be discovered has been discovered. Everything will unfold precisely as planned. All problems will vanish forever once the perfect system is accepted ... Communism was attractive not so much to oppressed workers but to intellectuals, to those whose arrogant, pride and intellect assured them, they were always right.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“Deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism ... Repression contributed in a non-trivial to the development of mental illness. And the difference between repression of truth and a lie is a matter of degree, not kind ... It was lies that bred sickness ... Lies warp the structure of being. Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.
The barely manageable crisis of a parent's terminal illness can be turned, for example, into something awful beyond description by the unseemly and petty squabbling of the sufferers' adult children. Obsessed by the unresolved past, they gather like ghouls around the deathbed forcing tragedy into an unholy dalliance with cowardice and resentment.
He broods in his basement imagining himself oppressed. He fantasizes with delight about the havoc he might wreak on the world that rejected him for his cowardice, awkwardness and inability. And sometimes, he wreaks precisely that havoc and everyone asks why. They could know but refused to.
Any natural weakness or existential challenge, no matter how minor can be magnified into a serious crisis with enough deceit in the individual family or culture. The honest human spirit may continually fail in its attempts to bring about paradise on Earth ... With love, encouragement and character intact, a human being can be resilient beyond imagining.”
―
The barely manageable crisis of a parent's terminal illness can be turned, for example, into something awful beyond description by the unseemly and petty squabbling of the sufferers' adult children. Obsessed by the unresolved past, they gather like ghouls around the deathbed forcing tragedy into an unholy dalliance with cowardice and resentment.
He broods in his basement imagining himself oppressed. He fantasizes with delight about the havoc he might wreak on the world that rejected him for his cowardice, awkwardness and inability. And sometimes, he wreaks precisely that havoc and everyone asks why. They could know but refused to.
Any natural weakness or existential challenge, no matter how minor can be magnified into a serious crisis with enough deceit in the individual family or culture. The honest human spirit may continually fail in its attempts to bring about paradise on Earth ... With love, encouragement and character intact, a human being can be resilient beyond imagining.”
―
“A superhero who can do anything turns out not to be a hero at all. He's nothing specific; he's nothing. He has nothing to strive against so he can't be admirable.
Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitations. Perhaps, this is because being requires becoming as well as mere static existence.
And to become is to become something more, or at least something different. That is only possible for something limited.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitations. Perhaps, this is because being requires becoming as well as mere static existence.
And to become is to become something more, or at least something different. That is only possible for something limited.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“All people serve their ambition.
In that matter, there are no atheists.
There are only people who know and don't know what God they serve.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
In that matter, there are no atheists.
There are only people who know and don't know what God they serve.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“Everyone is flawed in their own interesting and individual ways. Our flaws help define our character.”
― The Science of Storytelling
― The Science of Storytelling
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