the interesting stuff is in between.
via meaghano.
The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive, but none in which a double positive makes a negative — to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, “Yeah right.”
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rocky (via lifeinterstitial)
One of the best discussions of the controversy surrounding female genital mutilation I have ever read.
1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
Fascinating interactive graphic.
Breaking The Anthropologists’ Code?
Holmes-Eber’s mission puts her in a conflict of her own with some fellow anthropologists, who see collaborating with the military as a traitorous act. The issue makes her squirm. “It’s awkward,” she finally laughs.
Anthropologists used to work closely with the military during conflicts in the 20th century, she explains. But during the Vietnam era, some of that support had controversial results.
“Anthropology was used as intelligence, used to destroy certain villages and harm populations,” Holmes-Eber says. Horrified that their knowledge had hurt a culture, anthropologists set a do-no-harm standard. For many, that means not working with the military.
via heartbeatcity.
“Once a friend of mine—a woman, of course—said to me that since pain was only possible if you looked backward to the past or forward to the future she had eliminated the whole problem by living every moment by itself; every moment, she said, was filled with absolute silence. I have tried this, I will try anything, but I don’t understand how it works.”
— Alice Munro, “Tell Me Yes or No” (via heartbeatcity)
via beenthinking.
“Does happiness strain credibility? Is there something in the human spirit that distrusts its own appetites, its own yearning for healing and contentment? Can we not believe that two adults, in love, might resolve to make their own miracle?”
— In the Lake of the Woods - Tim O’Brien (via beenthinking)
