Nicole > Recent Status Updates

Listening to this is one of the most delightful things I’ve done for a long time.

"...The...symmetry between the dismantling of the wall...and the end of limitless Nature is invisible only to the rich Western democracies...various manifestations of socialism destroyed both their peoples and their ecosystems, whereas the powers of the North and the West have been able to save their peoples and some of their countrysides by destroying the rest of the world and reducing its people to abject poverty."

The premise is so captivating and has such far-ranging implications that I'm struggling with the fact that Rifkin's focuses his analysis on cinematic and literary works. I understand that he's a professor of English, but what his thesis could offer to the field of trauma work is exciting at the very least.

I believe it should be our duty as Americans to thoroughly look into and understand the genocide perpetuated in the founding of our country. Though this book is riddled in academic speak, it had a necessary perspective and a thorough understanding of the history.

"What does spatial copresence at a supposed moment of time mean in terms of thinking the relation between those "simultaneous" events? What does that spatial copresence have to do with the flow--processes of unfolding, becoming--within the experience of duration? What does present at the same time mean in these terms except being able to be plotted on a grid such that events occupy an "identical" temporal plane?"

In terms of shifting my conception of what history is, and what it would look like if indigenous histories were incorporated as a central perspective rather than an auxiliary one to the "truer" colonialist one, this is one of the most important books I've ever read.

"Old people always had hankies. They hid them on their bodies like ninjas with throwing stars."

Ha! My grandmother, rest in peace, was never without a hanky. I wonder what age it starts at. My mother is 70 and hit the mark a while ago...hmm...

At times, there's a slightly patronizing tone that the author adopts toward conservationists, generalizing them as a group. I'm also waiting for him to give a nod toward indigenous ways of looking at the land. So far, he's writing primarily from a European perspective--which makes sense since he's British, but given his topic, it will be an oversight if it's not included.

There is a subjective element to medicine that has too long been ignored or dismissed as "placebo". Reading this book is making me think hard about how long this subjective type of healing has been important for humanity.

I'm really appreciating the contextualization and fleshing out of this practice that is so often romanticized by New Agers.

"The instinct of capitalism and communism is to ignore loss, to assume that change will bring improvement, to cover over death with expanded consumption. Such modernist visions are telescopic: from the present [accelerating to] a future of freedom and plenty...What exists in between, the mess of lives lived in shifting concert with tides and winds and the never-fixed mark of ecological complexity, slides from focus."

the depth of the ignorance that white settlers had for indigenous ways of life is nauseating. Bathsheba Demuth isn't heavy handed in her views, but makes them known subtly and with much erudition.

There is nothing subtle about this book. It's like primal scream therapy in written form.

There’s something tremendously comforting about listening to Hannah Arendt’s eminently rational and breathtakingly erudite analysis of an era we still haven’t left. I don’t claim to understand it all, but it soothes my anxiety about the present day.

"Historically speaking, racists have a worse record of patriotism than the representatives of all the other international ideologies together, and they were the only ones who denied the great principle upon which national organizations of peoples are built, the principle of equality and solidarity of all people by the idea of mankind."

"The tremendous power of persuasion inherent in the main ideologies of our times is not accidental. Persuasion is not possible without appeal to either experiences or desires, in other words to immediate political needs...Every full fledged ideology has been created, continued and improved as political weapon and not as a theoretical doctrine.

Hot damn she’s good. Mind blown. I’m going to be the headless horseman by the time I’m done.

This is the second time I've come across Benjamin Disraeli in so many months. Fascinating figure--makes me wonder what would happen if Dan Brown went into politics.

And so the second attempt begins.

No matter how great the literary genius, it's never fun to read about someone dithering for pages on end.

There is something very circular about the nature of this book. The way he writes around something he could otherwise state overtly, the path by which the daughter comes to resemble the father, and the elliptical way the characters conspire about each other with each other. Nothing moves in a straight line.

Money appears to be as a state of grace. One can be truly good and honest as far as one has funds to afford these luxuries.

There's something obliquely sadistic about a Henry James novel. Even stranger, that's part of the appeal of reading his work. Erudite, elitist, gorgeously-written schadenfreude.

I don't know how many times I read or listen to a sentence by Eliot and find myself completely impressed with her ability to say so much in the most elegant way. I'm dread watching the downfall of Gwen in her marriage...