Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that society shapes individuals to fit predetermined roles and expectations.
Randolph Bourne's quote reflects a critical view of society's influence on individual identity, positing that societal norms act like a conspiracy that molds people into specific forms or 'statues' that serve social convenience. This process often constricts personal freedom and authentic self-expression, as individuals are pressured to conform to roles that society deems acceptable or beneficial.
In practice
During a social sciences lecture on the impact of societal expectations on personal identity.
In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.
We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.
The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated.
War is the Health of the State.
I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.
The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
A superior man in dealing with the world is not for anything or against anything. He follows righteousness as the standard.
It seems an insult to the night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming full of blessed design tranquility. All things follow their course.
Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it.
Remember, it is not your weakness that will get in the way of God's working through you, but your delusions of strength. His strength is made perfect in our weakness! Point to His strength by being willing to admit your weakness.
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