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Thread: great paragraphs from what you're reading

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    "Jean Valjean, there will be around you many voices, which will make a great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark. Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back before they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend to God."

    -Les Miserables
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "The first place Odysseus and his fleet visit after leaving Troy and sailing homeward at the end of the Trojan War is the land of the Lotus-Eaters. The Lotus-Eaters are an easygoing, friendly tribe who 'live on a flowering food' called lotus. They are a pleasant people, but they have no desires at all; they’ve snuffed them out with their self-deadening herb. They are unable to choose one path of action over another because they have fallen asleep to their guidepost, their 'home:' who they really are and what they are supposed to become. They are stuck at a fork in the road, unable to choose a direction. The Lotus-Eaters offer Odysseus’s men lotus, which makes them 'forget the way home.' Under the influence of the lotus, Odysseus’s men want to stay in the Lotus-Eaters’s land. Odysseus has to find them and take them back to the ship by force, where he ties them to the rowing[...]"

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    Tony D'Amato
    : I don't know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we're finished. We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell... one inch at a time. Now I can't do it for ya, I'm too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I've pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who's ever loved me. And lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that's... that's... that's a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin' stuff. You find out life's this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this, in any fight it's the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I'm gonna have any life anymore it's because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that's what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can't make you do it. You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That's football guys, that's all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?




    @lungs
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
    That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
    And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
    And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
    The work of hunters is another thing:
    I have come after them and made repair
    Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
    But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
    To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
    No one has seen them made or heard them made,
    But at spring mending-time we find them there.
    I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
    And on a day we meet to walk the line
    And set the wall between us once again.
    We keep the wall between us as we go.
    To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
    And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
    We have to use a spell to make them balance:
    'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
    We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
    Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
    One on a side. It comes to little more:
    There where it is we do not need the wall:
    He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
    My apple trees will never get across
    And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
    He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
    Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
    If I could put a notion in his head:
    'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
    Where there are cows?
    But here there are no cows.
    Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
    What I was walling in or walling out,
    And to whom I was like to give offence.
    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
    That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
    But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
    He said it for himself. I see him there
    Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
    In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
    He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
    Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
    He will not go behind his father's saying,
    And he likes having thought of it so well
    He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  6. #166
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    beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” beautiful. beautiful. beautiful.” beautiful*.*.*. beautiful*.*.*.
    —Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love

    In 1996, the concept artist Karen Reimer published the book Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love. Here is how she wrote it: She took the full text of a romance novel and alphabetized it. If a word appeared multiple times in the novel, it appears multiple times in her book.

    The book has no syntax and no sentences. It is a 345-page-long list of words in alphabetical order. It does not look or read like a novel. In fact, when you read it, it appears to be complete nonsense.

    We rarely read romance novels, but Reimer’s work is an exception. An absolute page-turner, it fascinated us from cover to cover, from the dramatic beginning:

    Chapter One
    A
    A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A

    And all the way through the surprising finish:
    Chapter Twenty-Five
    Z
    zealous

    Twenty-five chapters, not twenty-six: There is no chapter for X, as the novel contained no words beginning with the letter X. Romance novels may be XXX-rated, but they contain very few actual X-words.

    Even though it’s just a single book, Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love gives really suggestive insights into the entire romance genre. For instance, it’s clear that this is a book for her—the word her occupies almost a full eight pages (130–38). His? Two and a half (141–44). There’s half a page of eyes and a third of a page of breasts, but only a single line about buttocks. Occasionally, the book is downright racy—there are three climaxes on page 62 alone. You go, girl! (Or guy; there’s no way for us to know.)

    Sometimes the book dwells too long on the superficial. For instance, beautiful appears twenty-nine times. Intelligent? Only once. But at other times, one gets a whiff of the original book’s plot, such as a bone-chilling passage on page 187: “Murderers murderers, murdering murdering murdering murdering murdering murdering murdering, murderous murderous. murders murders, murky murmur murmured.”

    Over the years, we’ve turned to this book again and again, finding interesting new nuggets each time. This is a bit odd. You would think that by alphabetizing a romance novel, and thereby obliterating its meaning, Reimer would also eliminate everything that made the novel interesting. And that’s true, to an extent. But in the process, Reimer’s alphabetical transmutation reveals a world that was once invisible: word frequencies, the lexical atoms from which the novel was composed. Those frequencies—and the stories they tell—are what make her work such an engaging read.
    .

  7. #167
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    A bit long but this whole thing:



    This is what you are:

    Standing, in a field of wheat tall enough to brush your cheeks, running your fingers through living gold, looking up at a bowl of sky so blue and beautiful it physically hurts you.

    And you, six years old, red hair, green eye, body too small and dreams too big-

    You want to know everything.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Eight years old, and in your first war. Gramps - he tells you not to call him Gramps - took your name and remolded it, took some letters out and stuck some others in, gave it back to you as Llewyn. He did it again and you became Saeed. A third time in two years and now you’re Gilbert. As Gilbert you get your first taste of death - real death, the kind that comes in droves, the kind that comes when man kills man and no one thinks to stop it, the kind that is bloody and violent and undeniable.

    You ask Gramps why they’re fighting.

    He tells you the causes of the war, the beliefs of both sides, but you shake your head because you heard that already.

    Yeah, but Gramps, why are they fighting?

    He looks at you.

    Looks away.

    Tells you to stop calling him Gramps.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Eleven years old, and you still want to know everything, but you’re not so sure anymore you’ll like everything you learn. You’re Robert now. A week ago you were Mao. A week ago you were recording another war, another man-made monstrosity, and you’re beginning to wonder if anything will be quite so beautiful as that blue sky again.

    You think to ask Gramps; you don’t. He sees you watching the sky instead of the fighting and then he does something he’s never done: he reaches over and puts an arm around you.

    We are in the business of recording history, not happy endings, he says, almost gently. We are Bookmen. This is what that means.

    You look out and you see war.

    You are eleven and you are a Bookman.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Bitter. Fourteen. You’re in between names, right now, just as you’re in between wars. You say in between because you’ve learned that even when there are no wars looming on the horizon there are always wars. Sometimes they come suddenly; sometimes they do not. But there are always wars, will always be another war. When you tell Gramps this, he does not correct you.

    He does not correct you, but he takes you to a festival. It is a festival of flowers; it is a festival of color and light. It is a festival they hold every year, in this country, it is culture, it is beautiful, it is breathtaking. You ask Gramps why he took you here, and he says because this is history, too. We record this, too.

    You are a Bookman and you are fourteen and you are hating humanity and you are hating Gramps for showing you this and you are hating yourself because even after all the war and all the death, damn you, you see things like this and you remember blue sky and you still want to know everything. You know you’ll never stop, and you hate that.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Sixteen, and not Deak. You’re Lavi, now, even though that’s not really what you are. It’s an alias. You aren’t much of anything, anymore, and neither are other humans, in your opinion.

    You’re not Deak but you keep his bitterness. You keep his spite. Bitter and spiteful and cynical, that’s what you are, because it’s been sixteen years and forty nine names and the wars never end, never, no matter the beautiful things in between, and you-

    You just met a girl.

    She’s crying over corpses.

    She’s looking at you.

    Her name is Lenalee.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Eating spaghetti. Eating spaghetti and getting harassed by the science division, for what, uniforms? Eating spaghetti and listening to the light wind-chime of Lenalee’s laughter, eating spaghetti and laughing, and grinning, and those last two aren’t you, not really, they haven’t been you for a long time, but they’re. They’re something. You are eating spaghetti and Lenalee’s on one side and Johnny’s on the other and you’re going to spar with Yu later and that’s something.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Seventeen, and you have, tentatively, a friend.

    His name is Doug. He’s got black hair and blue eyes. His spine is straight. His gaze is straightforward and honest. You met him once before, a year ago, and now you’re on a mission and - and you’re friends. You think. The laughter feels more like you around him.

    And Doug meets Colette and wants to adopt her and that’s good, that’s not you, but the happiness you feel for him is, because Doug’s good, he’s not rotten, he’s not bitter or cynical and neither is she and they deserve each other, they’re good and you’re happy for them. That’s what you are: happy for them. Bookman watches you, disapproving, and you are happy for them.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Watching Doug die. Killing Doug with your own hands. Crying. Hating. Killing.

    Searing this moment, exactly, and in great detail, into your memory, because you can forget nothing, Lavi, Bookman, killer, and this more than anything you must remember: you cannot have friends. You cannot have friends, you cannot love, you cannot have a heart.

    Stare at the hair ribbon Doug bought for a girl who died and remember: you cannot have a heart. That is not what you are.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Eighteen, and you just met Allen Walker.

    He’s got white hair and grey eyes. His spine is straight. His gaze is straightforward and honest. He reminds you so strongly of Doug that it leaves you breathless, at first, and then you remember: no friends, no love, no heart. That’s not what you are, but you are eighteen, and you did just meet Allen Walker, and you have a strange feeling as Bookman eyes you suspiciously that you are in a whole lot of trouble.

    -

    This is what you are:

    About to lose Lenalee Lee - no. Reject that. That is not what you are. This is what you are: Saving Lenalee Lee. You have to.

    You are not allowed to have a heart but you have to save Lenalee Lee, as she goes down over the ocean, a beautiful dying star, as beautiful as festivals, as beautiful as blue skies, as beautiful as white ribbons and honest eyes and anything you have ever known. You’ve already lost Doug and you’ve already lost Allen and everything that you are, in this moment, is the sole necessity to save Lenalee.

    In the end, you do not. She saves herself, but it’s you that holds her, as she marvels over her own life, as you marvel with her. You hold her, Lavi, Bookman, and you cry tears of pure, shameless relief. You hold her. You hold her.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Right, like always. About the Allen thing. Meeting Allen Walker was a whole lot of trouble for you. Because now you’re burning up, burning to a crisp in a world of your own making, of Road’s making, and all because you met Allen Walker - because you met Yu Kanda, because you met Lenalee and Doug - and you don’t even regret it, is the worst part. You’re saving their lives at the expense of yours, and Lavi, you don’t even regret it.

    You look down at the knife in your chest and you look back at all the things you were - Deak, Anthony, Kaden, Jin, Jean, Robert, Mao, Charles, Enzo, Shiro, Ling, Gilbert, Saeed, Llewyn, more more more, and God, for all your perfect memory you cannot remember your very first name - and you realize that right now, as you burn, you are not a Bookman.

    And as Allen pulls you from the rubble, in the aftermath, as Lenalee cries because you’re alive, thank God, you’re alive, you don’t regret that much either.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Fighting beside your friends. Fighting for friends who are gone. Fighting for friends who are still here. You’re beside Yu Kanda, now, with a staff in your hands because your Innocence is shattered, how’s that for a metaphor, and you face down a foe you can’t possibly beat but you’ve got Yu at your side and you’ve got Allen in the wings, he’s always in the wings for you, always has your back, and you’ve got Lenalee, beautiful strong Lenalee, fighting till her legs won’t hold her and then fighting anyway, and you’ve got Krory, and you’ve got the Science Division, and you’ve got Gramps.

    You are a Bookman, and you are fighting for your friends.

    Remember, Bookman, a ribbon in your hand, and a friend long gone.

    Smile, briefly, and keep fighting.

    -

    This is what you are:

    Dying.

    Rotted slowly from the inside out. Your core going sour, insides shriveling, as parasites in the form of maggots and eyeballs and fangs dig into the meat of you and scoop you out. You die at the hands of the Noah. You die because Gramps won’t give them information, and because you tell him not to. You die slowly. You die painfully. You die screaming.

    You do not die pleading for your life, and you do not die giving up your friends, because that is not, God help you, what you are.

    This is what you are:

    Lavi.

    This is what you are:

    An Exorcist.

    This is what you are:

    A friend, and you will fucking die, and die again and again and again to save them, and you will die spitting in your murderer’s eye and you will die laughing-

    -

    This is what you are:

    Reaching, because that blue sky is right there, right in front of you, and it’s so, so beautiful, Gramps' arm around your shoulder and all your friends waiting, and you smile, and you reach-





  8. #168
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    An art dealer (this story is authentic) bought a canvas signed “Picasso” and travelled all the way to Cannes to discover whether it was genuine. Picasso was working in his studio. he cast a single look at the canvas and said: “It’s a fake.”
    A few months later the dealer bought another canvas signed Picasso. Again he travelled to Cannes and again Picasso, after a single glance, grunted: “It’s a fake.”
    “But cher maitre,” expostulated the dealer, “it so happens that I saw you with my own eyes working on this very picture several years ago.”
    Picasso shrugged: “I often paint fakes.”
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    @Wyrd


    DJB: What do you think happens after biological death and has your experience with lucid dreaming influenced your thoughts in this area and about the nature of God?

    Stephen: Let’s suppose I’m having a lucid dream. The first thing I think is, "Oh this is a dream, here I am." Now the "I" here is who I think Stephen is. Now what’s happening in fact is that Stephen is asleep in bed somewhere, not in this world at all, and he’s having a dream that he’s in this room talking to you. With a little bit of lucidity I’d say, "this is a dream, and you’re all in my dream." A little more lucidity and I’d know you’re a dream figure and this is a dream-table, and this must be a dream-shirt and a dream-watch and what’s this? It’s got to be a dream-hand and well, so what’s this? It’s a dream-Stephen! So a moment ago I thought this is who I am and now I know that it’s just a mental model of who I am. So reasoning along those lines, I thought, I’d like to have a sense of what my deepest identity is, what’s my highest potential, which level is the realest in a sense? With that in mind at the beginning of a lucid dream, I was driving in my sports car down through the green, Spring countryside. I see an attractive hitchhiker at the side of the road, thought of picking her up but said, "No, I’ve already had that dream, I want this to be a representation of my highest potential. So the moment I had that thought and decided to forgo the immediate pleasure, the car started to fly into the air and the car disappeared and my body, also. There were symbols of traditional religions in the clouds, the Star of David and the cross and the steeple and near-eastern symbols. As I passed through that realm, higher beyond the clouds, I entered into a vast emptiness of space that was infinite and it was filled with potential and love. And the feeling I had was-- this is home! This is where I’m from and I’d forgotten that it was here. I was overwhelmed with joy about the fact that this source of being was immediately present, that it was always here, and I had not been seeing it because of what was in my way. So I started singing for joy with a voice that spanned three or four octaves and resonated with the cosmos with words like, "I Praise Thee, O Lord!" There wasn’t any I, there was no thee, no Lord, no duality somehow but sort of, ‘Praise Be’ was the feeling of it. My belief is that the experience I had of this void, that’s what you get if you take away the brain. When I thought about the meaning of that, I recognized that the deepest identity I had there was the source of being, the all and nothing that was here right now, that was what I was too, in addition to being Stephen. So the analogy that I use for understanding this is that we have these separate snowflake identities. Every snowflake is different in the same sense that each one of us is, in fact, distinct. So here is death, and here’s the snowflake and we’re falling into the infinite ocean. So what do we fear? We fear that we’re going to lose our identity, we’ll be melted, dissolved in that ocean and we’ll be gone; but what may happen is that the snowflake hits the ocean and feels an infinite expansion of identity and realizes, what I was in essence, was water! So we’re each one of these little frozen droplets and we feel only our individuality, but not our substance, but our essential substance is common to everything in that sense, so now God is the ocean. So we’re each a little droplet of that ocean, identifying only with the form of the droplet and not with the majesty and the unity.


    http://www.mavericksofthemind.com/lab-int.htm
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  12. #172
    I sacrificed a goat to Zeus and I liked it
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tearsofaclown View Post
    An art dealer (this story is authentic) bought a canvas signed “Picasso” and travelled all the way to Cannes to discover whether it was genuine. Picasso was working in his studio. he cast a single look at the canvas and said: “It’s a fake.”
    A few months later the dealer bought another canvas signed Picasso. Again he travelled to Cannes and again Picasso, after a single glance, grunted: “It’s a fake.”
    “But cher maitre,” expostulated the dealer, “it so happens that I saw you with my own eyes working on this very picture several years ago.”
    Picasso shrugged: “I often paint fakes.”
    ...This reminds me of a story from my real life that's kind of ridiculous.

    Anyways, I had this rich aunt and uncle who notably liked to buy art instead of jewelry, among other things. They did a bad job working out their inheritance and the stereotypical angry family member goes and auctions off their things. She sells what everyone knows is an original Picasso to a garage sale for $75, saying it's a replica, and that outraged me. In this case it probably was a replica even if it was also a real Picasso.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Wyrd View Post
    ...This reminds me of a story from my real life that's kind of ridiculous.

    Anyways, I had this rich aunt and uncle who notably liked to buy art instead of jewelry, among other things. They did a bad job working out their inheritance and the stereotypical angry family member goes and auctions off their things. She sells what everyone knows is an original Picasso to a garage sale for $75, saying it's a replica, and that outraged me. In this case it probably was a replica even if it was also a real Picasso.
    I heard that story from a great Orson Welles documentary called F for Fake. About art forgery and truth in general. The most famous forgerer in the movie said something I found interesting, "If you hang a fake in the museum long enough it becomes the real thing."

    Some quotes from it:

    Orson Welles: I started at the top and have been working my way down ever since.

    Orson Welles: What we professional liars hope to serve is truth. I'm afraid the pompous word for that is "art".

    Orson Welles: With your permission, a bit of verse by Kipling: When first the flush of a new-born sun fell on the green and gold / Our father Adam sat under the tree and scratched with a stick in the mold / And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart / Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, 'It's pretty, but is it Art?'


    ORSON WELLES: "I, senor, am not one of anything, but, like you, senor, I am unique."


    F or Fake also calls into question the nature of “genius”: If Elmyr’s forgeries were good enough to pass off as Picasso or Modigliani’s work, or even to hang in museums under the assumption that they were the work of these masters, wouldn’t Elmyr’s genius be of equal or even nearly equal value to theirs?

    It touches on names. Welles is talking about how everything is named after somebody. And he visits this one gothic structure in Europe and says the author left his name off of it. Nobody knows who build it. And he likes that. He is sick of names. And that is what the movie is kind of about. These guys are making the same paintings but authorship is everything. Not the actual piece itself.
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  14. #174
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    Discovered something:

    BDSM is a cult that exists to enable abusive men to have a place in society where it is acceptable for them to torment women. The majority of doms are men and the majority of subs are women. Most local scenes are lead by a male dom or a group of male doms. BDSM claims to be divergent from mainstream culture and the status quo but it is in fact hyper-normative, an extreme caricature of the male dominated society we live in.

    To that end the goal of the cult of BDSM is to make abuse acceptable in society. This is accomplished in a few different ways.

    Method #1: Propaganda

    “Safe, Sane, Consensual.” You have heard the line repeated many, many times over in regards to BDSM culture. However, in
    reality BDSM is none of those things. The goal of the cult of BDSM is to convince society that BDSM is these three things, so the abusers will be allowed to operate under the guise of free choice. They need to convince the rest of society to turn a blind eye to the harm being done–this is aided by a patriarchal culture which already prefers to turn a blind eye to the abuse of women, and will look for any excuse to do so.
    Repeating this mantra over and over again is effective because humans have a tendency to believe things we hear repeated over and over. If BDSM truly was any of these things, they wouldn’t need to repeat it as often as they do, it would be plain as day.
    In the language of BDSM, many things we would recognize as harmful and abusive are given new names to make them sound clean and pretty for cultural consumption. We are told that submission is power, degradation is excitement, psychological disassociation is a spiritual experience (subspace), and trauma bonding is “after care”. Everything abusive about BDSM is repackaged in new language designed to manipulate the viewer’s opinion into a positive one.

    Method #2: the Virtue of Choice and the Invisibility of Manipulation

    In BDSM circles, submissives are taught that they are the ones in power, a lie designed to gain their trust and control them, which also serves as a way to manipulate public perception
    in to a positive view. In reality, submissives have more in common with people who are committing acts of self-harm. Doms exploit these vulnerable women by promising them love and acceptance in exchange for power and control. This is also a lie designed to manipulate the vulnerable submissive–the dom has no intention of extending empathy, respect, of kindness to the submissive, but views the submissive as an object to satisfy their own desires.
    Submissives are taught that they are empowered by servicing their doms, a lie designed to manipulate submissives
    in to obeying doms. Many submissives are “rewarded” with positive reinforcement for performing servility. “After care”, the BDSM newspeak for what is essentially trauma bonding, is a time period after a session of abuse where the submissive is rewarded with kindness. This rollercoaster emotional ride is designed to serve as a reminder to the submissive that as long as they do as they are told, they will receive the affection they crave.
    One submissive told me that her dom viewed her masochism as a
    gift, and that it empowered her to know this. In this way, BDSM culture operates exactly the same way as an abusive relationship: the women are lead to believe they are extra special, extra strong people for being able to put up with their dom’s controlling behavior.
    The women are sold a lie that what they are doing is a choice.
    And in the same way as other women who stay in abusive relationships, the psyches of submissives are invested in believing this lie.
    Submissives are taught by doms the right things to say. Like many women in abusive relationships, they are invested in protecting their abuser. Doms tell their submissives what it is that a “real sub” would do. Doms manipulate submissives by teaching them to take pride in servicing the dominant. This gives the dom power over the submissive because that pride and self-worth can be taken away from the submissive by the dom at any time. The submissive’s self-worth relies on their value to the dom, value which the dom assigns to them based on how well they obey. In this way, submissives are psychologically manipulated and invested in their own
    abuse, and will choose to suffer physical pain in return for validation of their human value from the dom.

    Method #3: the Invisibility of Domination

    In the rhetoric of BDSM culture, the focus is placed on the submissive and their supposed desires, which are fed to the submissive by the dominant. The justification for the abuse is that the submissive requested and desires and enjoys the abuse.
    What goes ignored is the mindset of the
    dom himself, and this is only to the dom’s advantage. Nobody asks what sort of psyche it takes to willingly cause harm to a vulnerable human being. Nobody questions the desires of the doms; the rhetoric states that the submissive is truly in control, and the dominant is only doing as they are asked. This is as far as the questioning goes.
    And yet, if that is true, why are they so eager to dominate? Is domination a chore, or a pleasure? Is domination not their own fantasy?
    Focusing on the illusion of the agency of the submissive takes away critique from the
    dom and places the burden once again upon the submissives. When a dom is criticized for abusive behavior, the submissives, who are reliant upon the dom for emotional validation, rush to his support to bear the brunt of the criticism and put them focus of the criticism on to themselves.
    What should be the focus of the moral question is not whether women have a right to be abused, but whether or not men have a right to abuse women. The tired old excuse of She Asked For It still seems to hold weight in defense of BDSM culture, even in self-proclaimed feminist circles which generally dissent such lines of thinking.

    In Conclusion

    BDSM culture exists only to provide abusive men a safe place to harm women. It serves no other purpose and should be dismantled immediately. - via marsinlibra

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    "In primary freedom, one utilizes all ways and is bound by none, and likewise uses any techniques or means which serves one's end."
    -Bruce Lee
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    Agu: Bullet is just eating everything, leaves, trees, ground, person. Eating them. Just making person to bleed everywhere. We are just like wild animals now, with no place to be going. Sun, why are you shining at this world? I am wanting to catch you in my hands, to squeeze you until you can not shine no more. That way, everything is always dark and nobody's ever having to see all the terrible things that are happening here.

    Agu: I saw terrible things... and I did terrible things. So if I'm talking to you, it will make me sad and it will make you too sad. In this life... I just want to be happy in this life. If I'm telling this to you... you will think that... I am some sort of beast... or devil. I am all of these things... but I also having mother... father... brother and sister once. They loved me.
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current," he said.
    "Where are you going?" the boy asked.
    "Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light."
    "I'll try to get him to work far out," the boy said. "Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid."
    "He does not like to work too far out."
    "No," the boy said. "But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin."
    "Are his eyes that bad?"
    "He is almost blind." [...]


    They walked up the road together to the old man's shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.
    "What do you have to eat?" the boy asked.
    "A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?"
    "No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?"
    "No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold."
    "May I take the cast net?"
    "Of course."
    There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.
    "Eighty-five is a lucky number," the old man said. "How would you like to see me bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?"
    "I'll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?"
    "Yes. I have yesterday's paper and I will read the baseball."
    The boy did not know whether yesterday's paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from under the bed. [...]

    "That's very kind of you," the old man said. "Should we eat?"
    "I've been asking you to," the boy told him gently. "I have not wished to open the container until you were ready."
    "I'm ready now," the old man said. "I only needed time to wash."
    Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket.
    "Your stew is excellent," the old man said.
    "Tell me about the baseball," the boy asked him.
    "In the American League it is the Yankees as I said," the old man said happily.
    "They lost today," the boy told him.
    "That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is himself again."
    "They have other men on the team."
    "Naturally. But he makes the difference. In the other league[...]

    "There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen."
    "Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace?"
    "I wanted to take him fishing but I was too timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid."
    "I know. It was a great mistake. He might have gone with us. Then we would have that for all of our lives."
    "I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand." [...]

    He no longer dreamed of storms, nor or women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. [...]

    then went up the road to wake the boy. He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing[...]

    The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it and walked in quietly with his bare feet. The boy was asleep on a cot in the first room and the old man could see him clearly with the light that came in from the dying moon. He took hold of one foot gently and held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him. The old man nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting on the bed, pulled them on.
    The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, "I am sorry."
    "Que Va," the boy said. "It is what a man must do."
    They walked down the road to the old man's shack and all along the road, in the dark, barefoot[...]

    "Good luck." the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not see them now the moon was below the hills.
    Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the part of the ocean were he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them.
    In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their still set wings made as they soared away into the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for[...]

    He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her el mar, which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because[...]

    He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well within his speed and the surface of the ocean was flat except for the occasional swirls of the current. He was letting the current do a third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he[...]

    But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
    The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.
    All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is painful.
    Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling in the sky ahead of him. He made a quick drop, slanting down on his back-swept wings, and then circled again[...]

    He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the ineffectual movements of the bird. That school has gotten away from me, he thought. They are moving out too fast and too far. [...]

    "The bird is a great help," the old man said. Just then the stern line came taut under his foot, where he had kept a loop of the line, and he dropped his oars and felt the weight of the small tuna's shivering pull a he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in. The shivering increased as he pulled in and he could see the blue black of the fish in the water and gold of his sides before he swung him over the side and into the boat. He lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring as he thumped his life out against the planking of the boat with the quick shivering strokes of his neat, fast-moving tail. The old man hit him on the head for kindness and kicked him, his body still shuddering, under the shade of the stern. [...]

    I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me. But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well.
    Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green sticks dip sharply.
    "Yes," he said. "Yes," and shipped his oars without bumping the boat. He reached out for the line and held it softly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He felt no strain nor weight and he held the line lightly. Then it came again. This time it was a tentative pull, not solid nor heavy, and he knew exactly what it was. One hundred fathoms down a marlin was eating the sardines that covered the point and the shank of the hook where the hand-forged hook projected from the head of the small tuna. [...]

    Make another turn in the dark and come back and eat them.
    He felt the light delicate pulling and then a harder pull when a sardine's head must have been more difficult to break from the hook. Then there was nothing.
    "Come on," the old man said aloud. "Make another turn[...]

    He did not take it though. He was gone and the old man felt nothing.
    "He can't have gone," he said. "Christ knows he can't have gone. He's making a turn. Maybe he has been hooked before and remembers something of it.
    Then he felt a gentle touch on the line and he was happy.
    "It was only his turn," he said. "He'll take it."
    He was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably heavy. It was the weight of the fish and he let the line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first of the two reserve coils. As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man's fingers, he still could feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible. [...]

    Then he looked behind him and saw that no land was visible. That makes no difference, he thought. I can always come in on the glow from Havana. There are two more hours before the sun sets and maybe he will come up before that. [...]

    Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. [...]

    He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was as sharp as a scythe and almost of the size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and dubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy's aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.
    That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly. [...]

    "He's headed north," the old man said. The current will have set us far to the eastward, he thought. I wish he would turn with the current. That would show that he was tiring. [...]

    A small bird came toward the skiff from the north. He was a warbler and flying very low over the water. The old man could see that he was very tired. [...]

    The line rose slowly and steadily[...]

    and then the surface of the ocean bulged ahead of the boat[...]

    and the fish came out. He came out unendingly and water poured from his sides.[...]

    "But you have not slept yet, old man," he said aloud. "It is half a day and a night and now another day and you have not slept. You must devise a way to sleep a little if he is quiet and steady. [...]

    I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad.
    After a while the fish stopped beating at the wire and started circling slowly again. The old man was gaining line steadily now. But he felt faint again. He lifted some sea water with his left hand and put it on his head. Then he put more on and rubbed the back of his neck. [...]

    You work now, fish, he thought. I'll take you at the turn. The sea had risen considerably. But it was a fair weather breeze and he had to have it to get home.
    "I'll just steer south and west," he said. "A man is never lost a sea at and it is a long island."
    It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first. [...]

    and the man saw his tail out of water. It was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender above the dark blue water. It raked back and as the fish swam just below[...]

    "Fish," the old man said. "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?" [...]





    Inside the shack he leaned the mast against the wall. In the dark he found a water bottle and took a drink. Then he lay down on the bed. He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and then over his back and legs and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up.
    He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning. It was blowing so hard that the drifting-boats would not be going out and the boy had slept late and then come to the old man's shack as he had come each morning. The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he saw the old man's hands and he started to cry. He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee and all the way down the road he was crying.
    Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside it[...]

    "How is he?" one of the fishermen shouted.
    "Sleeping," the boy called. He did not care that they saw him crying. "Let no one disturb him." [...]

    The boy carried the hot can of coffee up to the old man's shack and sat by him until he woke. Once it looked as though he were waking. But he had gone back into heavy sleep and the boy had gone across the road to borrow some wood[...]

    That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside the entrance to the harbour.
    "What's that?" she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now[...]

    "Tiburon," the waiter said. "Shark." He was meaning to explain what had happened. [...]

    "I didn't know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails." [...]

    Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about lions.
    Last edited by may; 06-02-2017 at 08:33 PM.

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    "to consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego"



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    BDSM is a cult that exists to enable abusive men to have a place in society where it is acceptable for them to torment women. The majority of doms are men and the majority of subs are women.
    The average heterosexual female wants to be tormented though. (I think females who are dykey and queer are different in this way then a normative female.) It's backwards to me too, because I'm also queer- but that is just how they are wired. They might claim otherwise in social situations to manipulate people and to come off not looking like a 'bad guy' - but straight females are naturally masochistic and they like it when straight men are stereotypically arrogant and jerk-y. It is attractive to them no matter how immoral it is. But I agree it's very normative.

    Females who are dykey/tough will tolerate a softer man much better- but most girls aren't Xena. (I've personally always gotten along very well with the sle dyke Xena women and have brutally hated the more 'typical female' (the feeling is mutual) - cuz we are competitors probably.) There are exceptions, reality is complicated etc but generally it's very true.

    The problem I guess with this natural submissiveness in society is it see
    ms like it gives permission for all men to treat women like shit because 'they like it anyway' but it's not so simple- since they will only like it from certain types of males as a private thing. Like Dan Savage said, our erotic lives aren't everything about us. It tends to be very hypocritical though, like that one feminist said how hot it was Channing Tatum calling girls 'sluts' but if a lesser attractive male did that- she would be offended. Understandable, but it's the type of thing that make non Chad males rage against the world and shoot up schools. I don't think it gives men or anybody else a free pass to be misogyinstic just because str8 females are organically masochistic. I know personally I will clash with most typical submissive females because it's like Yin and Yin. It doesn't mean I hate women, it's just how it goes sorta.
    Last edited by Hot Scalding Gayser; 06-01-2017 at 01:18 PM.

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    One of the many reasons I love William James:


    If, for instance, you have had the dubious fortune of wandering through Harvard Yard at the same time as a tour led by Crimson Key, you will probably be familiar with the story of Gertrude Stein and William James and the final exam. Gertrude Stein received the final exam book and wrote: “I am sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today.” To this, William James responded, “I know exactly how you feel. A.”
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chae View Post
    Discovered something:

    BDSM is a cult that exists to enable abusive men to have a place in society where it is acceptable for them to torment women. The majority of doms are men and the majority of subs are women. Most local scenes are lead by a male dom or a group of male doms. BDSM claims to be divergent from mainstream culture and the status quo but it is in fact hyper-normative, an extreme caricature of the male dominated society we live in.

    To that end the goal of the cult of BDSM is to make abuse acceptable in society. This is accomplished in a few different ways.

    Method #1: Propaganda

    “Safe, Sane, Consensual.” You have heard the line repeated many, many times over in regards to BDSM culture. However, in
    reality BDSM is none of those things. The goal of the cult of BDSM is to convince society that BDSM is these three things, so the abusers will be allowed to operate under the guise of free choice. They need to convince the rest of society to turn a blind eye to the harm being done–this is aided by a patriarchal culture which already prefers to turn a blind eye to the abuse of women, and will look for any excuse to do so.
    Repeating this mantra over and over again is effective because humans have a tendency to believe things we hear repeated over and over. If BDSM truly was any of these things, they wouldn’t need to repeat it as often as they do, it would be plain as day.
    In the language of BDSM, many things we would recognize as harmful and abusive are given new names to make them sound clean and pretty for cultural consumption. We are told that submission is power, degradation is excitement, psychological disassociation is a spiritual experience (subspace), and trauma bonding is “after care”. Everything abusive about BDSM is repackaged in new language designed to manipulate the viewer’s opinion into a positive one.

    Method #2: the Virtue of Choice and the Invisibility of Manipulation

    In BDSM circles, submissives are taught that they are the ones in power, a lie designed to gain their trust and control them, which also serves as a way to manipulate public perception
    in to a positive view. In reality, submissives have more in common with people who are committing acts of self-harm. Doms exploit these vulnerable women by promising them love and acceptance in exchange for power and control. This is also a lie designed to manipulate the vulnerable submissive–the dom has no intention of extending empathy, respect, of kindness to the submissive, but views the submissive as an object to satisfy their own desires.
    Submissives are taught that they are empowered by servicing their doms, a lie designed to manipulate submissives
    in to obeying doms. Many submissives are “rewarded” with positive reinforcement for performing servility. “After care”, the BDSM newspeak for what is essentially trauma bonding, is a time period after a session of abuse where the submissive is rewarded with kindness. This rollercoaster emotional ride is designed to serve as a reminder to the submissive that as long as they do as they are told, they will receive the affection they crave.
    One submissive told me that her dom viewed her masochism as a
    gift, and that it empowered her to know this. In this way, BDSM culture operates exactly the same way as an abusive relationship: the women are lead to believe they are extra special, extra strong people for being able to put up with their dom’s controlling behavior.
    The women are sold a lie that what they are doing is a choice.
    And in the same way as other women who stay in abusive relationships, the psyches of submissives are invested in believing this lie.
    Submissives are taught by doms the right things to say. Like many women in abusive relationships, they are invested in protecting their abuser. Doms tell their submissives what it is that a “real sub” would do. Doms manipulate submissives by teaching them to take pride in servicing the dominant. This gives the dom power over the submissive because that pride and self-worth can be taken away from the submissive by the dom at any time. The submissive’s self-worth relies on their value to the dom, value which the dom assigns to them based on how well they obey. In this way, submissives are psychologically manipulated and invested in their own
    abuse, and will choose to suffer physical pain in return for validation of their human value from the dom.

    Method #3: the Invisibility of Domination

    In the rhetoric of BDSM culture, the focus is placed on the submissive and their supposed desires, which are fed to the submissive by the dominant. The justification for the abuse is that the submissive requested and desires and enjoys the abuse.
    What goes ignored is the mindset of the
    dom himself, and this is only to the dom’s advantage. Nobody asks what sort of psyche it takes to willingly cause harm to a vulnerable human being. Nobody questions the desires of the doms; the rhetoric states that the submissive is truly in control, and the dominant is only doing as they are asked. This is as far as the questioning goes.
    And yet, if that is true, why are they so eager to dominate? Is domination a chore, or a pleasure? Is domination not their own fantasy?
    Focusing on the illusion of the agency of the submissive takes away critique from the
    dom and places the burden once again upon the submissives. When a dom is criticized for abusive behavior, the submissives, who are reliant upon the dom for emotional validation, rush to his support to bear the brunt of the criticism and put them focus of the criticism on to themselves.
    What should be the focus of the moral question is not whether women have a right to be abused, but whether or not men have a right to abuse women. The tired old excuse of She Asked For It still seems to hold weight in defense of BDSM culture, even in self-proclaimed feminist circles which generally dissent such lines of thinking.

    In Conclusion

    BDSM culture exists only to provide abusive men a safe place to harm women. It serves no other purpose and should be dismantled immediately. - via marsinlibra
    This article has a pretty good point. Abuse is pretty insidious and people going on forums posting about how they're trying to get permission to write their name and the letter i on official business forms are kind of creepy. Role-play is role-play, and the sadomasochism and bondage aspects minus dominance/submission mostly just come across like people trying to get endorphins like riding roller coasters, but the "lifestyle" part comes off like "Regardless of what you like in bed, don't you have anything better to do with your life, you know, outside of bed?"

  23. #183

  24. #184
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    Everybody has a field of reality to work in if he wants to. The childish trick of saying, "I would work if it were the right thing", is one of the many self-delusions of the puer aeternus by which he stays within the mothers realm and his megalomanic identification with the gods - who as you know do not work.

    Marie-Louise von Franz: The problem of the Puer Aeternus

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    John Anderton: It's better if you don't think of them as human.

    Danny Witwer: No. They're much more than that. Science has stolen most of our miracles. In a way, they give us hope, hope of the existence of the divine. I find it interesting that some people have begun to deify the Precogs.

    John Anderton: The Precogs are pattern-recognition filters, that's all.

    Danny Witwer: Yet you call this room «The temple».

    John Anderton: Just a nickname.

    Danny Witwer: The oracle isn't where the power is, anyway. The power's always been with the priests, even if they had to invent the oracle.




    John Anderton: Why'd you catch that?

    Danny Witwer: Because it was going to fall.

    John Anderton: You're certain?

    Danny Witwer: Yeah.

    John Anderton: But it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesnt change the fact that it was going to happen.


    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "It's not the future if you can stop it."


    John Anderton: Why'd you catch that?

    Danny Witwer: Because it was going to fall.
    John Anderton: You're certain?
    Danny Witwer: Yeah.
    John Anderton: But it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesnt change the fact that it was going to happen.


    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    "It was ninety-five degrees. We were driving along near a wooded area, and as we went through a tunnel, the radiator overheated. Water and steam were spilling all over the place. I was thinking, “Shit, I’ve just lost my ride.” The driver pulled over without saying a word. This was one of those guys who didn’t talk much. Some people who would pick you up were like that. You’d sit with them for hours and not a word.

    The guy got out of the car, walked to the rear, opened the trunk, took out a gas can, and then proceeded to walk straight into the forest. Huh? So I followed him. We walked maybe 150 yards, right off the road, straight into the trees. All of a sudden, there was this beautiful brook. The guy bent down, filled his gas can, walked back to the car, put the water in the radiator, and everything was fine. We got in the car and just started driving again.

    I was speechless. I finally turned to him and asked, “How did you know?” And I’ll never forget it, he just looked at me and said, “Well, I didn’t know there was a brook there, but we were in the mountains, so there had to be a water source close by. I figured I’d just walk until I found it.”
    .

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    I just started another James Baldwin novel so there will probably be a paragraph that hits me in the gut every other page but here's something:



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    "Dirty Steve" Stephens: Damn good riding with you, Chavez.

    Chavez: Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're all right...

    William H. Bonney: Murphy's taking inventory in Tunstall's store right now and you're saying that means nothing to you?
    Chavez: It means nothing to me? Murphy and his politicians have taken more blood from me than they ever will from you.
    William H. Bonney: How do you figure?
    Chavez: The Red Sands Creek Reservation. 200 people butchered in the snow with their stomachs empty. My mother's people. You see, Murphy was under government contract to supply us with beef, but two winters ago, he sent only rotten meat. No corn, no flour, just rancid beef crawling with worms. A few of my men and I set out to a camp in the middle of the night to try and get food. Oh yeah, they welcomed us in, and then they fired at us. I got away, only me. But when I got back to the Red Sands, I found out that the army had already heard about our big indian uprising and they paid us back. My mother was cut by a saber from her privates to her neck. My sisters were just babies, and they had their heads bashed in with boot heels so the army could save bullets. Everyone at the reservation was butchered AND IT MEANS NOTHING TO ME? Oh yeah, I went into Lincoln to take Murphy's head. And that's when John Tunstall found me, and he took me in, and he taught me a better way to bury Murphy.



    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  30. #190
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    The Schofield Kid: [after killing a man for the first time] It don't seem real... how he ain't gonna never breathe again, ever... how he's dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
    Will Munny: It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.
    The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.

    Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.



    Bill Munny: I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned.



    Little Bill Daggett: I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house.
    Will Munny: Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.


    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    You know what he [Eckhart] said? The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life; your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. [...] If you're frightened of dying and holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.[
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  32. #192
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    @Bullets


    Self-actualisation is the important thing. And my personal message to people is that I hope they will go toward self-actualisation rather than self-image actualisation. I hope that they will search within themselves for honest self-expression.

    - Bruce Lee

    The meaning of life. - The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualised and squeezed into a pattern of systems.

    Concepts vs. self-actualisation. - Instead of dedicating your life to actualise a concept of what you should be like, ACTUALISE YOURSELF. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualisation. It is to come to the realisation of what lies in our innermost selves.

    -Lee

    Concepts prevent feeling. Don't think-FEEL. Feeling exists here and now when not interrupted and dissected by ideas or concepts. The moment we stop analyzing and let go, we can start really seeing, feeling - as one whole. There is no actor or the one being acted upon but the action itself. I stayed with my feeling then - and I felt it to the full without naming it that. At last the I and the feeling merged to become one. The I no longer feels the self to be separated from the you, and the whole idea of taking advantage of getting something out of something becomes absurd. To me, I have no other self (not to mention thought) than the oneness of things of which I was aware at that moment.

    Abstract analysis is not the answer. - There is too much tendency to look inward at one's own moods, and to try and evaluate them. To stand on the outside and try to look inside is futile; whatever was there will go away. This also applies to a nebulous thing described as "Happiness." To try to identify it is like turning on a light to look at darkness. Analyze it, and it is gone.

    -Lee
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  33. #193
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    @Wyrd


    The result is that we work over the contents of the world selectively. It is overflowing with disorderly arrangements from our point of view, but order is the only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one can always find some sort of orderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable directions. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. There are in reality infinitely more things "unadapted" to each other in this world than there are things "adapted"; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them. But we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  34. #194
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    Father Filippon de Strata, a Catholic priest and scribe of some repute, was a bit of a Luddite when it came to printers. So outraged was he at the insidious and seditious nature of print, that he felt moved to make his views on the profession only too clear in his letter to the Doge of Venice, 1473.

    I, a scribe of good reputation, have been driven out of house and home by these cunning printers. They print without any shame, and at very low price, things that inflame the passions, while we scribes die of hunger. Cure this plague, if you will, by getting rid of printers. They persist in their wicked behaviour, setting Tibullus in type, while young girls read Ovid to learn about sin. These printers encourage this because they make such huge profits from it. They flood the market with anything that hints at lasciviousness. Destroy the printing press I beg you, or these evil men with triumph.
    .

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    I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances-and what are circumstances?-but touchstones of his heart-? and what are touchstones? but proovings of his heart? and what are proovings of his heart but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul?-and what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings?-An intelligence-without Identity-and how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? And how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances? . . .

    Your ever affectionate brother,
    John Keats.
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

  36. #196
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    This is from a Werner Herzog movie. This is from the perspective of an alien who observed us and tell us where we went wrong and stuff:

    “I could have told them, I know all about it.
    We traveled all the way from the outreaches of the Andromeda galaxy.
    Do you have any clue of how far that is?
    No you don’t.

    Let’s get this clear from the start, the closest star to this planet
    or should I say spec of dust, is only four and a half light years from
    here. And may I say that Alpha Centuari is a couple million degrees hot,
    which I don’t want to exaggerate, could be unpleasant.

    Now, how fast is the speed of light? Using conventional fuel and I mean
    rocket fuel to accelerate to 30% the speed of light wouldn’t take all the fuel tanks on planet earth or say the equivalent to the rocky mountains, it would take all the mass in the universe visible to the naked eye.
    That’s the earth, the sun, the solar system the milky way, all the stars in our galaxy, all the stars in the surrounding
    galaxies.

    Now how fast have you gone so far? the fastest speed achieved to date
    was by your voyager space probe which was accelerated to about 55,000 mph
    and is currently headed out of your solar system and into deep space.
    Now let’s suppose that that is a space ship and you are an astronaught on that
    ship and you are headed towards alpha centuari, which I will remind you is
    4.5 light years from here.

    Now Lets assume you started your voyage 20,000 years ago, this is the time of
    Cro-Magnon man paelilithica, cave paintings in the south of france, they’re
    hunting bison, rhino, wooly mammoths. And you’re speeding along at 55,000 mph
    for another 10,000 years, now you’re at neolithic, mankind begins agriculture,
    domesticated animals, sheep, horses, goats and pigs, now when I say pigs I mean
    domesticated pigs, this was mankind’s first arch sin, do you know why, because in order
    to domesticate and breed animals you need to become sedentary, this begat settlements
    which begat towns which begat cities which begat all the problems which will
    become mankind’s destruction.
    Breeding dogs is not a sin because they’ll go with you on your nomadic hunts,
    but pigs, that was a sin. I have diverted.

    The ship continues on its way for another 6,000 years, ancient Egypt, pharos
    pyramids, a few thousand years more past ancient Greece, ancient Rome and into
    the middle ages and more arch sin, an Italian poet decides it would be fun to
    climb a mountain, just for the fun of it, the Swiss didn’t do it the sherpas didn’t
    do it till bored 19th century Englishman paid them and then they robbed the mountains of their dignity, that was a sin.

    The ship moves on, the declaration of independence, world war one, communism, world
    war two, Marylyn Monroe, Elvis Presley to the present day. Now how far have you come?
    You’ve accomplished just 15% of your journey to Alpha Centuari.
    You have in pro-creating gone through 500 generations, how could you have avoided
    in-breeding, rebellions, murders, would you not just become grotesquely mal-deformed freaks with no idea where you came from or why you began the journey to begin with ?
    and might I add that the closest star which might be considered non-lethal is not 4.5 light years from here, it’s more like 200,000.”
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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    22 January 1980

    A distinguished doctor has revealed one of the most delicate secrets of the Second World War - how scarce supplies of penicillin were diverted to the British Army in North Africa to cure the gonorrhoea that threatened to jeopardise the planned invasions of Sicily and Italy.

    When the British Army reached Tunis, troops, some of whom had survived three years of desert warfare, were being laid low by the curse of the casbah at an alarming rate. There were similar problems in Algiers.

    Penicillin was still being perfected but it was known that it would quickly dispatch VD. The problem was that there was not even enough to treat soldiers wounded in action or badly burned airmen.

    Sir James Howie, formerly director of the Public Health Laboratory Service, has now disclosed that the army’s doctors sought guidance from Winston Churchill. His verdict was: “It must be used to the best military advantage.”

    In 1943 Sir James was deputy to Major General Leo Poole, director of pathology at the War Office. Within a few weeks of the Afrika Korps withdrawing to Europe it was apparent that despite threats of dire military discipline, some of our best fighting men had been using the respite in hostilities somewhat unwisely, and had fallen to a new and particularly virulent strain of gonococci which the available remedy of permanganate douches failed to cure.

    Writing in the British Medical Journal, Sir James, now 72, tells of the dilemma which faced the War Office. He recalls that opponents argued that using penicillin to treat gonorrhoea would be certain to provoke parliamentary questions. It would be asked: “Why were all the gallant wounded men unable to have penicillin while some scallywags received it to relieve them of the discomforts their indiscretions had brought on them?”

    The two doctors developing penicillin for the treatment of wounds, Brigadier Hugh Cairns and Professor Howard Florey, were against sending supplies to North Africa, arguing that they had not even been able to assess its full value for the prevention of gas gangrene.

    General Poole, who died in 1965, decided to seek the highest advice and within a few days the file had gone to Downing Street. After Churchill replied Cairns and Florey were called back and General Poole told them: “We have our answer. It is that penicillin should he used to treat gonorrhoea among the assault troops.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/society/...tution-algiers

  39. #199
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    I'm not actually reading this (I want to now), but it seems to fit best here.




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    A learned man once went to visit a Zen teacher to inquire about Zen. As the Zen teacher talked, the learned man frequently interrupted to express his own opinion about this or that. Finally, the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed. "Stop," said the learned man. "The cup is full, no more can be poured in." "Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions," replied the Zen teacher. "If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?"

    In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup. My friend, drop all of your preconceived fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is so useful? Because it is empty.
    "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."

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