I have to admit, the terrorists were following their prophet,” Dan says. “They were willing to do essentially what I did. I see the parallel. But the difference between those guys and me is, they were following a false prophet, and I’m not. “I believe I’m a good person,” Dan insists. “I’ve never done anything intentionally wrong. I never have.
But it also demonstrates how difficult it is to correct a false belief after people have made an emotional investment in that belief being true. When our heroes turn out to be sleazebags, self-deception is easier than facing the facts.
The religious literature handed out by the earnest young missionaries in Temple Square makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith – still the religion’s focal personage – married at least thirty-three women and probably as many as forty-eight. Nor does it mention that the youngest of these wives was just fourteen years old when Joseph explained to her that God had commanded that she marry him or face eternal damnation.
I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more richly and intensely.
Using data gathered in 2011, the CDC study estimated that across all age groups, 19.3 percent of American women “have been raped in their lifetimes” and that 1.6 percent of American women – nearly two and a half million individuals – “reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey.
I came to understand that I had baffled and infuriated my father at least as much as he had baffled and infuriated me.
The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.
At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn’t the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard.
Said his name was Alex. And he was big-time hungry. Hungry, hungry, hungry. But real happy. Said he’d been surviving on edible plants he identified from the book. Like he was real proud of it.
In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber’s actions can affect the welfare of the entire team. The consequences of a poorly tied knot, a stumble, a dislodged rock, or some other careless deed are as likely to be felt by the perpetrator’s colleagues as the perpetrator. Hence it’s not surprising that climbers are typically wary of joining forces with those whose bona fides are unknown to them. But.
The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive.
I have some good friends here, but no one really understands why I am here or what I do. I don’t know of anyone, though, who would have more than a partial understanding; I have gone too far alone.
But then I’m not easily shocked. I’ve had several friends who drowned or got murdered or died in weird accidents. In Alaska you get used to strange stuff happening.
Rape, Boylan pointed out, is the only crime in which the victim is presumed to be lying.
Much of the food he put on the table came from hunting – despite the fact that he was uncomfortable killing animals. “My dad cried every time he shot a deer,” Billie says, ’but we had to eat, so he did it.
How can a society actively promote religious faith on one hand and condemn a man for zealously adhering to his faith on the other?
I’m going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect.
Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!
Everett was strange,” Sleight concedes. “Kind of different. But him and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That’s what was great about them. They tried. Not many do.
He offered a crystal-clear notion of right and wrong, an unambiguous definition of good and evil. And although his perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the American republic.