Sunset Intersection: Nov 21, 2017

Quote of the Week: BLACK LIVES MATTER / SLAVA UKRAINI / WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM

"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it." Wendell Berry "No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feelings they produce are not transferable. It’s not only the awe & deep silence, or their unbelievable stature -- for they are ambassadors from another time." John Steinbeck

Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, Huston Smith

"As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves. Only the slightest of barriers separates us from our sacred unconscious; it is infinitely close to us. But we are infinitely far from it, so for us the barrier looms as a mountain that we must remove with our own hands. We scrape away at the earth, but in vain; the mountain remains. Still we go on digging at the mountain, in the name of God or whatever. For the most part we only hear of the final truth; very rarely do we actually see it. The mountain isn't there. It never was there."

Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

"Ambition is a path, not a destination, and it is essentially the same path for everybody. No matter what the goal is, the path leads through Pilgrim's Progress regions of motivation, hard work, persistence, stubbornness, and resilience under disappointment. Unconsidered, merely indulged, ambition becomes a vice; it can turn a man into a machine that knows nothing but how to run. Considered, it can be something else--pathway to the stars, maybe.

I suspect that what makes hedonists so angry when they think about overachievers is that the overachievers, without drugs or orgies, have more fun."

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November 21, 2017

Can we learn?