This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.
Absence | Consciousness | Death | Evil | Means | Meditation | Men | Power |
And so, the question for the science of mental health must beÂcome an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reÂflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live? We will see the import of this at the close of this chapter, but right now we must remind ourselves that when we talk about the need for illusion we are not being cynical. True, there is a great deal of falseness and self-deception in the cultural causa-sui project, but there is also the necessity of this project. Man needs a "second" world, a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. "Illusion" means creative play at its highest level. Cultural illusion is a necessary ideology of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. To lose the security of heroic cultural illusion is to die—that is what "deculturation" of primitives means and what it does. It kills them or reduces them to the animal level of chronic fighting and fornication. Life becomes possible only in a continual alcoholic stupor. Many of the older American Indians were relieved when the Big Chiefs in Ottawa and Washington took control and prevented them from warring and feuding. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of death for their loved ones, if not for themselves. But they also knew, with a heavy heart, that this eclipse of their traditional hero-systems at the same time left them as good as dead.
Absolute | Anxiety | Anxiety | Cause | Confidence | Order | Parents | Power | Question | Security | Self | Society | Terror | Understanding | Weakness | Worth | Society | Child | Think |
Certainly Ecotopians regard trees as being alive in almost a human sense Â… And equally certainly, lumber in Ecotopia is cheap and plentiful Â… Wood therefore takes the place that aluminum, bituminous facings, and many other modern materials occupy with us.
It doesn't matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning.
Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith
Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount.
It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.
Order | People | Usefulness |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
Destroy | Enough | Good | Government | Life | Life | Order | Patriotism | Wishes | Government |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I thought I had already paid for everything. Not like women who always pay and pay and pay. There is no principle of reward and punishment. Simple exchange of values. You give something and get something in return. Or do you work for something. Either way, you pay for everything that is worth something. I was redeemed your life a lot of things that I liked, and that's why I felt the joy of life. Things that give you joy of preparing, may be paid in several ways - knowledge, experience, exposure or money. To enjoy life, in order to learn about your money and get something nutritious to enjoy it consciously. Generally, it is possible. The world is a good store.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I thought I paid for everything. Not like women, pay and pay and pay. There is not a reward or punishment. Just exchange of values. Something comparable to, and in return you get something else. Or work for the sake of something. Anyway after all, at least partially good pay. Much of what I was paying, like me, and I had a good time. You pay either the knowledge or experience, or risk, or money. Enjoy life is nothing like the ability to get something equivalent expended money and realize it. And to get the full price for your money you can. Our world - a solid company. Excellent as a theory. In five years, I thought, it seems to me the same stupid, like all my other superior theory.
Good | Joy | Life | Life | Money | Order | Reward | Thought | Work | World | Worth | Learn | Thought |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
There is no answer to the evils of mass unemployment and mass migration into cities, unless the whole level of rural life can be raised, and this requires the development of an agro-industrial culture, so that each district, each community, can offer a colorful variety of occupations to its members.
Challenge | Language | Materialism | Order | Society | Society |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally thought to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which might otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the deception of others; all one has to do to obtain the desired results is to impute suitable values to the immeasurable costs and benefits. The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking: with is worse, and destructive of civilization, is the pretense that everything has a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.
Compassion | Evil | Little | Work |
Everything that I think that I need to do, is all only in order to propel me to some place, that when I get there I think I will be happier. So, everything that I am doing, no matter what it is, all of my lists of rights and wrongs, are all about me getting to a manifestation, that I believe I will then be happier...So, why don't I take a short cut and just be happy?
Evil |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
We see that man entirely resembles the higher mammals, and most of all the apes, in embryonic development as well as in anatomic structure. And if we seek to understand this ontogenetic agreement in the light of the biogenetic law, we find that it proves clearly and necessarily the descent of man from a series of other mammals, and proximately from the primates.
Church | Education | Existence | Important | Influence | Need | Order | Public |
There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged.
Culture | Order | Relationship | Self | Will |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.
Change | Ignominy | Inevitable | Order | People | Protest | System |