We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Tom RobbinsRead
One tended to lose one’s bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that absurdity becomes more difficult to navigate than overt aggression because it challenges our understanding of reality more deeply.
Tom Robbins highlights the disorienting effect of seemingly benign but bizarre actions in contrast to open hostility, implying that societal norms render overt aggression more acceptable. The gentle absurdities in life can often unsettle us more profoundly than open displays of anger, suggesting that we struggle to find our place in a world where rationality is challenged by the unpredictable.
Themes
AbsurdityNormalcyRealityAggressionDisorientation
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on the unpredictability of human behavior in psychology class.
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The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.
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Tom RobbinsRead
The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions - anger, jealousy, etc - to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.
Tom RobbinsRead
On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.
Tom RobbinsRead
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