Writer Between Worlds

Soulful writing about humans and places

Category: Kultur

  • Quote of the day

    “People need their group identification, because this identification protects them, literally, from the terrible forces of the unknown. It is for this reason that every individual who is not decadent will strive to protect his territory, actual and psychological. But the tendency to protect means hatred of the other, and the inevitability of war –…

    Read more: Quote of the day
  • Quote of the day

    “Piaget’s value system considers rule by cooperation a more satisfactory equilibration in human relations than rule by authority. (…) Rigid traditionalists assume that the answer to the question ‘what is the good?’ can be – has been – answered permanently, and concretely, with the list of laws. (…) Adherents of tradition rely on the attribution…

    Read more: Quote of the day
  • Quote of the day

    “Life without law remains chaotic, affectively intolerable. Life that is pure law becomes sterile, equally unbearable. The domination of chaos or sterility equally breeds murderous resentment and hatred.” Peterson, J. (1999) – Maps of Meaning, p. 397

    Read more: Quote of the day
  • Quote of the day

    On strangers and strange ideas: “Arrival of the stranger, concretely presented in mythology, constitutes a “threat to the stability of the kingdom” (…). The stable meaning of experiential events, constrained by the hierarchical structure of group identity, is easily disrupted by the presence of the “other”, who practically poses a concrete threat to the stability…

    Read more: Quote of the day
  • Quote of the day

    Quote of the day

    “In fact, we humans (and all other organisms) are almost selfless slaves whose entire purpose is to serve our molecular masters. (…) If the gene-centred view is correct, then evolution is nothing at all to do with ‘us’. We are nothing more than sophisticated robots, constructed over 3.5 billion years of mutation and selection to…

    Read more: Quote of the day
  • Saying Goodbye to a Tree

    I hugged the tree in my garden yesterday as it spread its arms out into that empty space that summer weaves out of vapor and linden fragrance. I hugged my tree yesterday held it tight bark against cheek and whispered my goodbyes. It felt rooted and rough I entered its shy shade like one enters a…

    Read more: Saying Goodbye to a Tree
  • Citatul zilei – Despre magie

    Citatul zilei – Despre magie

    “Magicianul se ocupă azi de relații publice, de propagandă, de prospectarea pieței, de anchete sociologice, de publicitate, informație, contra-informație și dez-informație, de cenzură, de operațiuni de spionaj și chiar de criptografie, această știință fiind în secolul al XVI-lea o ramură a magiei. (…) Pe nedrept istoricii au tras concluzia dispariției magiei odată cu apariția științei…

    Read more: Citatul zilei – Despre magie
  • On religion

    On religion

    “Despite cautionary comments by Kluckhohn and others on the “gain and cost” of various religious practices such as witchcraft, the tendency has been consistently to stress the harmonizing, integrating, and psychologically supportive aspects of religious patterns rather than the disruptive, disintegrative, and psychologically disturbing aspects; to demonstrate the manner in which religion preserves social and…

    Read more: On religion
  • On ideologies (2)

    “Four main classes of explanation have been most frequently employed: the cathartic, the morale, the solidarity, and the advocatory. By the “cathartic explanation” is meant the venerable safety-valve or scapegoat theory. Emotional tension is drained off by being displaced onto symbolic enemies (“The Jews,” “Big Business,” “The Reds,” and so forth). The explanation is as…

    Read more: On ideologies (2)
  • On ideologies

    On ideologies

    “It is when neither a society’s most general cultural orientations nor its most down-to-earth, “pragmatic” ones suffice any longer to provide an adequate image of political process that ideologies begin to become crucial as sources of sociopolitical meanings and attitudes. In one sense, this statement is but another way of saying that ideology is a…

    Read more: On ideologies
  • On true life

    “The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we’re alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments.” Don DeLillo – Point Omega (2010).

    Read more: On true life
  • On the solitude of writing

    On the solitude of writing

    “The person who writes books must always be enveloped by a separation from others. That is one kind ofsolitude. It is the solitude of the author, of writing. To begin with, one must ask oneself what the silence surrounding one is—with practically every step one takes in a house, at every moment of the day,…

    Read more: On the solitude of writing