Culture – Page 9 – Writer Between Worlds

Quote of the day

“Education, in the sense in which I mean it, may be defined as the formation, by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and a certain outlook on life and the world. (…) The search for an outside meaning that can compel an inner response must always be disappointed: all “meaning” must be at bottom…
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Epidemiology

One epidemic calls forth anotherand one infectious protein spawnsinfectious thoughts.Mental representations spreading like viruses.Unchecked. Alert! Long lines before inoculation centers.Demand for fiction is high.Trust has been thrown off-kilter.Too little truth producedto fight this lethal disease. No medicine as yet against the fever ofconviction. Maintain a safe distanceand epistemological hygiene.Refrain from visiting the specters of panic.To…
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Linguistic Research Project – Humble Request

To my dear readers: Hi guys, I hope everyone is doing well! I was wondering if any of you might like to help me with my new linguistic pet project. I was wondering how far the equality of the sexes has come and what it feels like to be a woman in our day-to-day interactions…
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Quote of the day

“In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy . . . whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games. Idolaters by instinct,…
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Inarticulate

So little left to express. Spleen? Acedia? The signifiers have lost their signifieds and are straying. Ideas, heavy as rock, sink to the bottom of rivers waiting to be swept away by a sudden flood of effervescence or settle, with the mud, along the banks of dam lakes and rot. Occasionally, some debris resurfaces –…
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Quote of the day

“Understanding a people’s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity. (…) It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.” Clifford Geertz – The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books Classics)
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Words of wisdom, cautionary words

On creativity: “If too few opportunities for curiosity are available, if too many obstacles are placed in the way of risk and exploration, the motivation to engage in creative behavior is easily extinguished. (…) So, if the next generation is to face the future with zest and self-confidence, we must educate them to be original…
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On migration and diasporas

“To live “in diaspora” is to reside in one place but to keep in motion an emotional, cultural, or political relationship with another, whether it is the site of one’s nativity that subsequently became a point of departure or an ancestral “homeland” virtually conjured but never visited. (…) Diasporas (…) are platforms where received notions…
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Quote of the day

“To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of ‘historical necessity’, but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. (…) Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous (…). It means, rather, examining and bearing…
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Leave your shadows behind

that hour. on the long path to spring, when darkness clears and the trees drop their skeletal shadows in the snow like a bad memory, like baggage one no longer needs to carry. when the frost glistens with a gazillion different suns in a myriad different eyes and the crows’ croaking falls silent silent… that…
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September reading

here I am, sitting on a bench next to autumn absorbing the last of the scorching sun and watching the ants move like clockwork in a playground we call our own. here they are, mapping the maze with staccato precision. I am reading a poem, like every other year. later, I’ll get up to go…
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Spirituality, modernity and Brownian motion

Just a thought… So many of us feel depleted, drained, stressed out. Our beings flogged from within, our lives – our biggest gift – turned into empty chases. Pursuing a zillion things that we can grab and touch and display, but which aren’t real. We live in societies that prioritize task efficiency, competition, action, and the accumulation of stuff over…
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Category: Culture