Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices – TV, jets, freeways and so on – but I hope it’s been made plain that the real evil isn’t the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It’s the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil.
You, sir, what are the three kinds of particular rhetoric according to subject matter discussed?” But Phaedrus is prepared. “Forensic, deliberative and epideictic,” he answers calmly. “What are the epideictic techniques?” “The technique of identifying likenesses, the technique of praise, that of encomium and that of amplification.
Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else’s.
You don’t have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle.
When spontaneity and individuality and really good original stuff occurred in a classroom it was in spite of the instruction, not because of it. This seemed to make sense. He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformity to hateful students wasn’t what he wanted to do.
Miles later and the heat is just ferocious. Sunglasses and goggles are not enough for this glare. You need a welder’s mask.
Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn’t know.
I’m about to sharpen up the engine a little.
To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.
When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
Dad?” “What?” A small bird rises from a tree in front of us. “What should I be when I grow up?” The bird disappears over a far ridge. I don’t know what to say. “Honest,” I finally say.
The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.
I don’t want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going.
Between the lines Phaedrus read no doubts, no sense of awe, only the eternal smugness of the professional academician.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.
Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.
The One in India has got to be the same as the One in Greece. If it’s not, you’ve got two. The only disagreements among the monists concern the attributes of the One, not the One itself. Since the One is the source of all things and includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things, since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always describe something less than the One itself.
It’s been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature’s order which was as yet unknown. Now it’s time to further an understanding of nature’s order by reassimilating those passions which were originally fled from.
The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man’s consciousness, are a part of nature’s order too. The central part.
That is impractical, but practicality isn’t the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.