My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Ye have locked yerselves up in cages of fear and, behold, do ye now complain that ye lack FREEDOM!
Interpretation
Fear can confine us, and we must overcome it to attain true freedom.
This quote by Robert Anton Wilson highlights the self-imposed constraints that fear can create in our lives. It suggests that when we allow fear to control us, we become trapped in a metaphorical cage, limiting our freedom and opportunities. Only by confronting and overcoming our fears can we truly experience the freedom we desire.
In practice
In a motivational speech about breaking through personal barriers.
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
Hip-hop definitely taught me a lot. Having to create your own identity and become known and respected in a male-dominated field - it requires some guts. There are times you have to be strong, and times when you have to stand alone for what you believe in.
If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and nonviolence. But if your enemy has no conscience like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer.
God is my witness that up to now, my only aspiration in life is to be a useful element within the army! I have for long been convinced that, to safeguard the country and give happiness to the people, it is necessary first of all to prove once more to the world that our army is still the old Turkish army.
To be courageous requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place, and circumstance. It is an opportunity that sooner or later is presented to us all.
God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.
In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.
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