kemasminda

“What could I say to such priests and doctors? I would say to the priest that God made me as I am, that I had no choice, that He must have made me like this for a purpose, that He knows the ultimate reasons for all things and that therefore it must be all to the good that I am as I am, even if we cannot know what that good is. I can say to the priest that if God is the reason for all things, then God is to blame and I should not be condemned. And the priest will say, `This is a matter of the Devil and not of God,' and I will reply, `Did God not make the Devil? Is He not omniscient? How can I be blamed for what He knew would occur from the very commencement of time?” “And the priest will refer me to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and tell me that God's mysteries are not to be understood by us. He will tell me that we are commanded to be fruitful and multiply. I would say to the doctor, `I have been like this from the first, it is nature that has moulded me, how am I suppe...

"...the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be...The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self." -Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm, first published by Holt, Rineheart and Winston, New York, 1941. http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Escape_from_freedom.html and then comes the question many strive to answer; what do we risk to lose when we are already in an individualised state of mind? Even more, i think. The attraction of the self makes it even harder to conform, whilst the pressure for conformity never ceases—in fact the pressure exponentially increases—staring you down through that bright screen all day and for most of the night. Freedo...

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual. —————————— What is different? What is wrong? It is the significance we see in the "freak", the novelty of the unknown, A break in pattern that draws in the thrill seekers and repels those who dwell in comforting familiarity. But either way it will make us notice. The fact that it draws attention makes it valuable, a value that could and would be marketed, capitalised, and sold. It is currency. Why must we kill that which we find so precious? Maybe it is because we can only gain a measure of control over a being when we make it a thing—when we exercise the taking away of its life and its will. What a dream it is for us to control—beauty,...