William Miller
"[T]echnicians. They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences. . . .
"I'll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists. Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature. Which is true, but that's not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.'
"Scientists are preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.
"The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific."
Michael Crichton, Jurassic ParkGabrielle Leggett: "I've not ever been able to think clearly, as other people do, even the simplest thoughts. Everything is always so confused in my mind. No matter what I try to think about, there's a fog that gets between me and it, and other thoughts get between us, so I barely catch a glimpse of the thought I want before I lose it again, and have to hunt through the fog, and at last find it, only to have the same thing happen again and again and again. Can you understand how horrible that can become: going through life like that—year after year—knowing you will always be like that—or worse?"
Sam Spade: "I can't. It sounds normal as hell to me. Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend. Thinking's a dizzy business, a matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can. That's why people hang on so tight to their beliefs and opinions; because, compared to the haphazard way in which they're arrived at, even the goofiest opinion seems wonderfully clear, sane, and self-evident. And if you let it get away from you, then you've got to dive back into that foggy muddle to wangle yourself out another to take its place."
Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse
"It must be admitted that from the religious point of view this pluralist type of society involves serious disadvantages. It tends to make religion a matter of secondary importance. It means that man's first duty is not religious but political. We do not ask whether a man is a good Christian or a good Catholic, but whether he is a good citizen or a good American. If he is this, his religion is a matter that concerns only himself—and there is even a danger that it may be treated as a private hobby, so that a man's church membership will mean no more than his membership of a golf club.
"On the other hand, a pluralist society of this kind has certain compensating advantages for religion. It lays a greater weight of spiritual responsibility on the individual Christian. He can no longer afford to take his religion for granted. If he is to stand firm amid the shifting sands of democratic opinion, he must know where he stands and what he stands for, and since he is in constant contact with other forms of Christianity, he must know where they stand too—where they agree and where they differ and how far it is possible or necessary to cooperate with them in defense of their common interests and common spiritual values.
"All this involves a considerable intellectual as well as a moral effort, an effort which it is difficult to make at the present day when the whole tendency of modern popular education and public opinion is concentrating our opinion on the problems of our modern secular democratic and technological culture which force themselves on our attention, through the thousand brazen tongues of organized publicity."
Christopher Dawson, The Formation of Christendom"What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists."
Ian Malcolm in Michael Crichton's Lost World
So the problem with taking long walks outside or any of that nature stuff was, well, it was boring. The worlds online may be virtual, but they were constant stimuli in constant flux. You saw, you experienced, you reacted. It never bored. It never got old because it was always changing. You were always engrossed.
* * *
So no, Brandon wasn't walking through this Manhattan woodland because he suddenly had an appreciation for the great outdoors or fresh air or any of that stuff. He did it because walking like this bored him. It bored him silly.
[It was] balance for the constant stimuli.
More than that, boredom was a kind of thinking tank. It fed you. Brandon didn't take walks in the woods to calm himself or get in tune with nature. He did it because the boredom forced him to look inward, to think hard, to concentrate solely on his own thoughts because nothing around him was worthy of his attention.
Certain problems cannot be solved if you are constantly entertained or distracted.
Harlan Coben, Missing You.[Some years ago] Bloomberg published an article by Michelle Fay Cortez (July 4, 2014) entitled: "Shocking: Many Pick Electric Jolt Over Solitude in Study." The article explains that most people vastly prefer passive activities like reading or listening to music over spending just a few minutes by themselves. People tend to avoid being alone with their own thoughts. Randy Kasten who is the author of Just Trust Me: Finding the Truth in a World of Spin explains that "the ability to think critically is one skill separating innovators from followers. Critical thinking reduces the power of advertisers, the unscrupulous and the pretentious, and can neutralize the sway of an unsupported argument."
[A]s Clare Boothe Luce (she was highly intelligent and the wife of Henry Luce) opined, "What generally passes for "thought" among the majority of mankind is the time one takes out to rearrange one's prejudices." [R]emember the words of Ann Landers: "That ability to block out distraction helps to explain what makes some brains more efficient than others."
Constitutional
Documents McMaster
Constitutions and Other Legal
Documents Solon.org
Canadian Parliament Web Site (the
"Reference Material" link is particularly useful)
Sam Spade: "You must be proud of your past, huh?"
Old Mr. Exon: "Well, Sonny, a past like mine is the finest thing an old man can have. I've swindled my partners and betrayed my friends. I've turned State's evidence just to see my associate get sent up for twenty years. And they say my wife died under mysterious circumstances, and I got rich off her insurance."
From a 1947 Sam Spade radio script, "The Adam Figg Caper," by Robert Tallman and Gil Doud.