Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can't hope to attain through hard work and emulation.
Martha NussbaumRead
There's nothing illogical, it seems to me, about saying, 'I am going to care deeply about my work and my writing. I'm also going to care deeply about my family and my child.'
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of balancing professional dedication with familial love.
Martha Nussbaum's quote reflects a harmonious approach to life where one can commit to both their professional responsibilities and personal relationships. It suggests that caring deeply about one's work is not in conflict with nurturing family bonds and responsibilities, and that individuals can pursue their passions while also valuing the profound connections they have with loved ones.
In practice
In a speech about work-life balance, one might quote Nussbaum to highlight the importance of nurturing both career and family.
Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can't hope to attain through hard work and emulation.
This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.
Often, we feel helpless in lots of situations in our lives. The way anger gets a grip on us is it seems to be a way to extricate ourselves from helplessness.
Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become more responsive, more critical, bigger.
I find so often, you know, just on a very mundane level; you've got a meeting and your child's acting in a school play. You can't do both things. And it's not simply that you can't do both, but whatever you do, you're going to be neglecting something that's really important.
Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.
Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
So that's what I'm here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven't felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green.
There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.
If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.
[H]e lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years.
There are days we live_x000D_ as if death were nowhere_x000D_ in the background; from joy _x000D_ to joy to joy, from wing to wing,_x000D_ from blossom to blossom to_x000D_ impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
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