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Melissa Barringer's avatar

Love it! Came across this similar quote the other day:

"In contemporary society, our Adversary majors in 3 things:

noise, hurry and crowds…The world screams at us - faster, louder, more. God calls to us - slower, softer, less." -Richard Foster

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Adam Sommer's avatar

Brilliant quote! Definitely one to remember on the daily.

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Melissa Barringer's avatar

I agree, I just bought the book it came from: Celebration of Discipline

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Adam Sommer's avatar

Sounds like Saturnius is the author!

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Bryan Winchell's avatar

Oh, that’s a good one, too, Melissa!

For me, I think it speaks to why, as much as I’ve enjoyed going to concerts and sporting events with large crowds over the years, I think perhaps I could sense that chaos, Adversary energy, and, whether any of us admit it, just as there’s something unsettling about that force, what’s more unsettling is how can find ourselves somewhat seduced by it.

These days in my post-Chiron Return early 50s, I mostly don’t do things that involves crowds and considering my 45-day incarceration by the State two years ago, I generally view belief in the State as the “most dangerous superstition,” as voluntaryist writer Larken Rose puts it.

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Adam Sommer's avatar

well put. My first social anxiety I ever experienced was actually at a Widespread Panic concert. It was horrible. It definitely shaped me. And yeah, it's good to avoid becoming a statist. Dangerous business.

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mary kate rodman feighan's avatar

Thank you! Just the perspective I've been needing for a while.

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Adam Sommer's avatar

you are welcome. happy that you enjoyed reading it

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Bryan Winchell's avatar

I’m definitely on your wavelength about all of this, Adam.

The excellent Cooper quote set the standard for this piece as poetic and profound, and you lived up to it.

Did you happen to catch Cooper’s recent appearance on the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast? If you haven’t, I think you’d enjoy it.

Anyway who listened to it would then have the antidote for all of these ignoramuses who are claiming Cooper is some kind of neo-Nazi, revisionist history. The truth of the matter is the man engages with everyone equally on a deep level in which he employs a very simple, but profound-on-one’s-perspective thought experiment: Everyone, including the Hitlers, the Klaus Scwabs and the Mother Theresa’s, was a 3-year-old child at some point. If you grant that and then spend your time studying history and herstory and then telling stories about human-story, you’ll end up “committing the sin” of humanizing the Other.

And then the folks who see the world in binaries will begin to straw man your work, claiming you believe the Villain of their story is the Hero of yours, and never understanding that you’re not working with that template.

Isn’t it fascinating how our view of the world-story can impede our ability to understand others?

Anyway, thanks for the great food for thought to start my week, Adam!

somehow is a

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