“Why am I compelled to write?… Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger…” ~ Gloria Anzaldua
(via Social Justice Sexuality)
“Make no mistake, he said: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.”
“If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it… then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords.” -Aristotle
“You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it?s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong….
I don?t feel frightened by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell ? possibly. It doesn?t frighten me.” [smiles]
64 years ago today, my government used a nuclear bomb against a civilian population - not to cripple her military resources, which many generals believed were already depleted (Eisenhower told the Secretary of War in July of 1945 that “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”), but to devastate and terrorize Japan to the extent that they would be forced to surrender. (And incidentally, the U.S. Code of Law defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets…” which seems like an awful apt description of Hiroshima).
So on this anniversary of atrocity, to remind myself of our bottomless capacity to inflict suffering on other people, I will post my favorite Oppenheimer quote.
J. Robert Oppenheimer headed up the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb. In mid-July of 1945, the first successful test detonation was carried out; the test bomb was called Trinity (Oppenheimer had bet ten dollars it wouldn’t detonate at all; Enrico Fermi was taking bets on “whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world”). Years later, plagued by conscience about the thing he had helped to unleash on the world, Oppenheimer would remember the aftermath of Trinity:
“A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that one way or another.”
When I was fourteen years old my family visited Los Alamos, where there’s a museum about the Manhattan Project - complete with sand fused into glass by the detonation of Trinity, and endless video loops of mushroom clouds spreading into the sky. In a corner a small TV was set into the wall, where an interview with Oppenheimer played perpetually. The sadness in his voice as he recited that quote was scarier than all the radioactive scrap metal and naked bomb casings and TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs that adorned the air-conditioned quiet of the converted bunker.
Video: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Movies/Movie8.shtml
“In all human beings, if only understanding be brought to the business, dignity will be found, and that dignity cannot fail to reveal itself, soon or late, in the words and phrases with which they make known their high hopes and aspirations and cry out against the intolerable meaninglessness of life.”
- H.L. Mencken
“Why are our life spans so limited? The answer is simple. Natural selection favors the genes of those with the most descendants. Those numbers tend to grow exponentially with the number of generations- and so this favors the genes of those who reproduce at earlier ages. Evolution does not usually favor genes that lengthen lives beyond that amount adults need to care for their young. Indeed, it may even favor offspring who do not have to compete with living parents. Such competition could promote the accumulation of genes that cause death.”
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Full text of this awesome article…
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“Keep your goals away from the trolls.”
(Juancy got this one, not me. I can’t claim credit for it)
“It was one of those nights, I quickly decided, when you slip into an alternate continuum, a city that looks exactly like the one where you live, except for the peculiar difference that it contains not one person you love or know or have even spoken to before. Nights like that, you go into a familiar bar and find that the staff has just been replaced; then you understand that your motive in going there was simply to see a familiar face, on a waitress or a bartender, whoever….”
“Engaging in violent acts is not a good way to treat depression. It is, however, effective. To deny the inbred curative power of violence would be a terrible mistake.”
