My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that one should not abandon their kin or community, as doing so leads to feelings of isolation and struggle.
Robert Anton Wilson's quote reflects on the consequences of abandoning one's close relationships in favor of negative influences or ideologies. It serves as a cautionary reminder that when we distance ourselves from those who are important to us, we may find ourselves alone in our battles, regretting the choice to sever these essential bonds.
In practice
In a speech about community values, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of support systems.
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly...
There's the hypothesis that things just keep happening to Russians, things that keep turning them into the same kind of subjects, as opposed to citizens. The more credible hypothesis, I think, is that there is a kind of trauma, a social trauma that is passed on from generation to generation.
Logic doesn't apply to the real world. D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind's I, 1981.
There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.
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