Zack

“Point being: we’ll never have a harmonious, kind and functional society without extensive inner work being done by many or most of us on a regular basis. And this is where the neo-monastic institutions would be of help: At major transit stations and periods of crisis in life, people would be supported to do the hard work that inner integration requires. Seriously. It’s hard work. It takes time, effort and resources. I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago. There was a terrifying emptiness in my heart that had somehow snuck up upon me during sleep. There was a kind of inner storm cloud, a chaos I couldn’t grasp or even see the beginning or the end of. In my mind lingered the memory of a strangely violent dream in which I had been stopped from calling an ambulance after somebody had been struck down. I felt deeply disoriented; drifting in an imageless field. Everything around me felt unreal somehow, and I feared that madness might creep up on me, as it has on others in my family. Yet, the experience was eerily familiar. I sensed how this confusion had made itself known earlier, in waking states, as a subtle tinge on the fringe of my awareness. I spent a good portion of the following day away from writing and studies, meditating and exploring what appeared to be an old wound that had opened in my mind. Today, a few days later, my mind is clear and open as a cloudless sky, the love of life resting softly in my chest. I cherish these peaceful moments, as I know they too will pass, sooner or later.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two

“Everybody should have the benefit of talking to a kind, listening professional therapist while growing up (just think of how the number of molestations would drop, how kids would treat each other better, how family life would improve). Everybody should get to learn to meditate, both with mindfulness and other techniques so that one can handle stress and get in touch with one’s own emotions.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“We’re shifting from one pattern, one societal creature, to another. And as long as we conceive of society, the world, and our place in it, from a distinctly modern perspective, we will have mounting dissonance until our ears bleed.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two

“The walls between people are thin here, and if I listen quietly, I hear what is going on. Greenwich Village is like that too. Not just being close—because I don’t feel it in a crowded elevator or on the subway during the rush—but on a hot night when everyone is out walking, or sitting in the theater, there is a rustling, and for a moment I brush against someone and sense the connection between the branch and trunk and the deep root. At such moments my flesh is thin and tight, and the unbearable hunger to be part of it drives me out to search in the dark corners and blind alleys of the night.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon