An infinite number of ways

With an infinite number of ways of being wrong and usually just one way of being precisely correct, the wonder is not that people are so often wrong but that anyone ever gets it right.

The pleasures of self-denial

Denial of one's desires decreed and imposed by others can never be enjoyed as self-denial sometimes can. The pleasures of self-denial, such as they are, are rooted in celebration of self-control and self-determination, the very opposite of external restriction.

Key to growth

The key to growth is to make a lot of mistakes but to never repeat one.

Blind spots (Golas)

What you cannot think about, you cannot control. What you cannot conceive of in your awareness, you will stumble over in your path....If you refuse to admit that automobiles exist, you're going to get hit by cars, not because you are sinful or neurotic, but just because you are not looking at automobiles. You won't see them coming.

Thaddeus Golas, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment

Living inside an sf novel (Robinson)

I have always believed that science fiction is the best way to express modern American life, because everything is changing so fast and because we're in a gigantic techno-surround that we can never escape. Essentially, we are living inside a science fiction novel—one of those giant collaborative monstrosities—and that's what history is now. On the other hand, if you live inside a science fiction novel, what does the science fiction novel (per se) do? Thinking of the future becomes more and more difficult. The future really is unpredictable, yet if you're writing science fiction seriously you still have to try at least to build a plausible scenario. Even that's getting hard.

Kim Stanley Robinson

Neologism

Chucklepuppets: people who dance for the amusement of others, often without being aware of it.

Of Nuclear Families & Explosions (Kipnis)

To those who want to maintain that non-divorced families turn out less neurotic or happier adults, the evidence supporting such views is a little scanty: please look around. Are traditional families really such happy, neurosis-free places? They seem to produce their share of criminals and sociopaths, and run-of-the-mill unhappiness. Clearly the answer to the much-debated question "Does divorce harm children?" should be "Compared to what?" Compared to contexts of chronic unhappiness and dissatisfaction, to unmet needs as status quo, to bitching mothers, remote fathers, and other gendered forms of quotidian misery? Is it really likely that the majority of unhappy parents are also such master thespians that kids remain unaffected by family contexts of emotional distance or sexual coldness or mutual disrespect of long-term disappointment? Unfortunately what "for the sake of the children" really means is multi-generational training grounds for lowered expectations as an affective norm; for "that's just the way it is" as a guide to living; for the idea that change spells catastrophe and trauma, and wanting anything more or different is ridiculous.

Laura Kipnis, Against Love: A Polemic

Favorite New Bumpersticker

1/20/09: End of an Error.

Bad poetry

Unlike, say, bad medicine or bad math, one can do some good with bad poetry.

Enjoyment

I would rather enjoy a person, place, thing or experience than love it, for the same reason I prefer to walk about freely rather than in chains. There is a neediness to love, a whiff of obsession, which often strikes me as subtly demeaning to everyone involved.