The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-acceptance and questioning societal norms that negatively affect self-worth.
Morrie Schwartz highlights that the prevailing culture often promotes negativity and dissatisfaction with oneself. He advocates for the strength to reject societal pressures and standards that do not foster self-esteem and personal happiness, urging individuals to cultivate their own sense of worth regardless of external influences.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-acceptance and individuality.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.
Am I the woman I think I am, the woman I want to be? More importantly, am I the woman the Savior needs me to be?
There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.
The people's instincts are still right. You see them come to the rescue of someone-a child who falls down a well-hundreds of people rush to help, and labor and equipment are volunteered without any thought of who's going to pay for it. This is a basic feeling in Americans. They don't stand back in such a circumstance and ask what the government's going to do about it.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
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