Bob Koo

“The toy is the lodestar of the child’s survival. The consequences of his failure to get his toy are disastrous. That Hoffman’s—and anyone else’s—pursuit of glory operates in the same way is why one man’s fear of failure and striving for perfection is significant, why it is not a matter of bourgeois decadence, in a world where a million Syrian children are in exile and starving. The Syrian child, the child lacking his toy, and the actor fear for their survival. How will they survive? And how will they medicate their fear?

I suppose this is the moment where I am supposed to say that fear can be conquered by trusting in the risen Lord or whatever. But I would just as well save the reflex. I would just as well not waste meaningless words to counter the assertion about which Hoffman was exactly right: this world is damn terrifying. It is easy enough to say that fear is an illusion or something trumped-up when you don’t read the newspaper or have a frank conversation with your friend. How could one not be scared in a world where your birth is the beginning of your preparation for death? This is a world of cancer and hunger and beheadings and layoffs and heartbreak and stabbings and innumerable and head-spinning and creative forms of violence and lovelessness. This is a world where people are still burnt alive. That is, in this world there are people who must endure, for several hundred seconds, the sensation of a hot iron enveloping the body until they die of bleeding, inhalation, or organ failure. What sane person would not be terrified in such a world?”
― Philip Seymour Hoffman Was Right MBird

“Understanding, I believe, is a unifying force and unity is just what is unlikely to happen in a culture where people can live next to someone who fundamentally disagrees with them about life’s most important questions. Empathy says, “Okay, I don’t get understand you, but I don’t have to and I don’t have to win the argument. And don’t worry about the recycling bins while you’re out of town; I’ll take care of them.”
― Mike Cosper

“All parenting involves choosing between the day (why have another argument at dinner?) and the years (the child must learn to eat vegetables). Nancy’s error seems to have been that she always focussed on the day, in a ceaseless quest to keep peace in the home she shared with the hypersensitive, controlling, increasingly hostile stranger who was her son. She thought that she could keep the years at bay by making each day as good as possible, but her willingness to indulge his isolation may well have exacerbated the problems it was intended to ameliorate.”
― Anonymous

“If the web is the water we live in, expressive individualism is the chlorine that permeates it.”
― Samuel James, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age