Curiosity Pub

2021-03-13 20:10:31 Elevate yourself. Open / Comment

2021-03-13 17:15:19 Well, I think this story of Cain can be interpreted in a totally different way...It’s simple! The mark came first: that’s where the story started. There once was a man with something in his face that frightened people. They were afraid to lay a hand on him, or his children; they were awed. But maybe—in fact, I’m sure of it—there wasn’t literally a sign on his forehead like a postmark. Things in life are rarely that obvious. No, it must have been something uncanny, almost imperceptible: a little more spirit, a little more daring in his look than people were used to. This man had power, and others were afraid of that power. He was ‘marked.’ They could explain it however they wanted, and ‘they’ always want what’s easy and comforting and puts them in the right. They were scared of Cain’s children, so the children had ‘marks’ too. In other words, they explained the mark not as what it really was—a special distinction—but as the opposite. They said that the people with this mark were sinister and unnerving—and so they were. Anyone with courage and character always seems unnerving to others. They felt very uncomfortable having this tribe of fearless, sinister people running around, and so they put a label on them, hung a story around their necks, to get back at them and get some compensation for all the times they had been scared.
... Ancient stories like that are always true, but they’re not always recorded and passed down in the right way. What I think is that Cain was a fine fellow, and they told this story about him because they were scared of him. It was just a rumor, idle gossip. But it was perfectly true, insofar as Cain and his children really did bear a kind of mark and were different from most people.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:34:23 Predictability arises from patterns in phenomena. Patterns in deterministic phenomena allow the distillation of laws. That’s how we become polarised, controllable, and easily deceivable. Manage your stat, lads. Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:28:46 People depend on constant communication with others to keep their minds organised. We all need to think to keep things straight, but we mostly think by talking. We need to talk about the past, so we can distinguish the trivial, overblown concerns that otherwise plague our thoughts from the experiences that are truly important.
— Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:22:35 Reminder: self-doubt prevents self-overestimation but can cause unnecessarily extreme self-underestimation to the point where it becomes a habit and destroys self-esteem. Balance your doubt and your ego. Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:11:03 We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. That duty may be a hobby; it may even be a dissipation. We may work in the East End because we are peculiarly fitted to work in the East End, or because we think we are; we may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting. The most monstrous martyrdom, the most repulsive experience, may be the result of choice or a kind of taste. We may be so made as to be particularly fond of lunatics or specially interested in leprosy. We may love negroes because they are black or German Socialists because they are pedantic. (2)
— Paragraph, Words from the Internet Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:10:07 When he makes us feel that he cannot endure the innumerable faces, the incessant voices, the overpowering omnipresence which belongs to the mob, he will have the sympathy of anybody who has ever been sick on a steamer or tired in a crowded omnibus. Every man has hated mankind when he was less than a man. Every man has had humanity in his eyes like a blinding fog, humanity in his nostrils like a suffocating smell. But when Nietzsche has the incredible lack of humour and lack of imagination to ask us to believe that his aristocracy is an aristocracy of strong muscles or an aristocracy of strong wills, it is necessary to point out the truth. It is an aristocracy of weak nerves. (1) Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:08:02 The only thing I learned from my encounters is that I got a lot to learn on how to make healthy emotional connection with people. The thing is, my life ride isn’t what you think of it to be. I want to be a soldier, and in the army the “man” they defined is someone responsible to protect his team and brothers and his family. I’ll try my best to accomplish that. And if I fail, I will die with my head held high. Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:03:18 And in some nights, it was you who stopped my heart from breaking. You, nobody else, and I never thanked you enough for that, Emma. Open / Comment

2021-03-12 20:02:49 This is really, really strange. It's one thing to analyze the situation and then spin it; it's another thing to then start to believe your spin.
— Emma Sky Open / Comment