Into the Void

Technorati: American+Gothic Grant+Wood WASP

“Baseball bats are now the preferred weapon for many drug gangs and others who have a business need to administer behavioral reminders. They’re cheap, lethal, legal, untraceable, and hey! it’s the national pastime.”
— George Carlin

The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years…. That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defense against the dangerous new knowledge. … When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. … Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity.
G Gaia, AOL Member
Quoted on Wisdomquotes.com

Anosognosia for Hemiplegia: A Window into Self-Awareness

…Anosognosia brings questions of the origin of self-awareness to the forefront. How can someone lose the ability to know when she is or is not moving? Is this some type of elaborate Freudian defense mechanism, or is this person entirely unaware of her illness? How is self-awareness represented in the brain, and is this representation isolated from or attached to awareness of others? Though none of these questions are fully answerable at this time, research into anosognosia has provided scientists and philosophers with insight into some of these ancient questions of human consciousness.

Inside the Hotdog Factory: 39 Years Ago Today: Anniversary of the Death of Lenny Bruce

An insight into neurolinguistics from an unexpected source. Lenny Bruce had died over 10 years before I first heard this on a vinyl LP back in the late ’70s.

“Believe me, I’m not profound, this is something that I assume someone must have laid on me, because I do not have an original thought. I am screwed. I speak English. That’s it. I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to somebody else. Then I must just take, ding ding ding, somewhere.”
– Lenny Bruce

neurolinguistics Lenny Bruce

Thought for the Day:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn
Quoted by Gary Craig in the EFT Insights Newsletter (July 6, 2007)

EFT emo

By way of BeliefNet:

[The] defilements are like a cat. If you feed it, it will keep coming around. Stop feeding it, and eventually it will not bother to come around anymore.

-Ajahn Chah, “Still Forest Pool”
From “365 Buddha: Daily Meditations,” edited by Jeff Schmidt. Reprinted by arrangement with Tarcher/Putnam, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

reputation

“I read something recently . . . and this one phrase leapt out at me from the book DAMAGE by Josephine Hart. It says, ‘Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.’ And that kind of sums me up.”
– Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield

Googlism for: banth

Thought I’d look up my nick. Apparently I’m pretty damn scary.

All the faults of our mind – our selfishness, ignorance, anger, attachment, guilt, and other disturbing thoughts – are temporary, not permanent and everlasting. And since the cause of our suffering – our disturbing thoughts and obscurations – is temporary, our suffering is also temporary.

-Lama Zopa Rinpoche, “Ultimate Healing”

From Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations,” edited by Josh Bartok.