Quest...........................

 

What makes this country great, I think, is not what it gives us (which is considerable), but what it allows us to give to others.

When we talk about American enterprise, this is what we mean. When we talk about “building something”, that is what we’re really after. The opportunity to be a net positive on this Earth. A producer of something meaningful and lasting, not just a passive consumer of bread and circuses.

That is the real American Dream. Lest we forget.

-Gaping Void, from here

Quest.............................

 . . . the Western dream of autonomy and choice without limits is, in fact, a prison; that the quest to define ourselves on our own is a kind of El Dorado, driving to madness the many who seek after it; that for our best, highest selves to soar, other parts of us must be tied down, enclosed, limited, bound.

-Sohrab Ahmari,  The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos

      

And it will be ever so...............................

      The revelation of the structure of DNA by Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin brought one journey of genes to its close, even as it threw open new directions of inquiry and discovery. . . . Old questions were replaced by new ones.

-Siddhartha Mukherjee,  The Gene:  An Intimate History

locked..........................

The movie Mr. Nobody examines the core belief that we can find happiness if we make the right choices in life.  We can't; it's impossible.  But the belief that we have real choices that can bring us what we want is cherished by the ego because it keeps us locked into a never-ending quest of looking for happiness where it can't be found.

-David Hoffmeister,  Quantum Forgiveness:  Physics, Meet Jesus

Contemplate............................

“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."

-Albert Einstein

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Ok...............that means................

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the very idea..........................

What is particularly liberating about Socrates and it is just as relevant today as in the fifth century B.C., is his hostility not just to the "right answer" as to the very idea of there being a right answer.

-Paul Johnson,  Socrates:  A Man For Our Times

Majestic...............................

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

-The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Full text of the letter is here.

Presumptuousness........................

The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuous-ness in the age-old question:  "What is the meaning of life?"  As though it was someone else's responsibility to tell you.  Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question.  And it is your job to answer it with your actions.

-Ryan Holiday, excepted from The Obstacle Is The Way:  The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

About precision.........................

One problem with philosophical thinking - as with most academic disciplines - is that it tends to stick ideas into absolute categories, leaving little wiggle room for the complexities and inherent internal contradictions of ordinary human experience.  One of Aristotle's lasting contributions to philosophy and science was his counsel, "We must not expect more precision that the subject matter admits."  And the question, "What is the best way to be an old man?" is far from being a precise one.  In fact it's about as open-ended as they get.

-Daniel Klein,  Travels with Epicurus:  A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life

On fathoming the unfathomable.......

      I have this nagging suspicion that for the past fifty-odd years I have been dismissing Heidegger's question as total twaddle without ever really trying it on for size.  Martin Heidegger was a twentieth-century German existentialist who focused - if hundreds of pages of dense, enigmatic prose can be called a focus - on the concept of being.  As much as I can grasp his question, I gather that he is not asking why some things exist and others do not, or even asking what is is that causes something to exist and what constitutes its existence.  No, he is after even bigger game than that.  Heidegger is asking us to confront the idea that existence itself can be called into question, and this, he believes, is the ultimate philosophical question.  He writes, "To philosophize is to ask 'Why are there things that are rather than nothing?'  Really to ask this question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end.  Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy."

-Daniel Klein, as excerpted from Travels with Epicurus:  A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life

Ed. note:  Heidegger's quote and question come from his Introduction to Metaphysics, where in he also apparently says,  "It is absolutely correct and proper to say that `You can't do anything with philosophy.' ... For the rejoinder imposes itself: granted that WE cannot do anything with philosophy, might not philosophy, if we concern ourselves with it, do something WITH US?" 

Me too...................................

Feynman's wiki is here

a deep reverence for the enigma of life....

Curiosity and irreverence go together.  Curiosity cannot exist without the other.  Curiosity asks, "Is this true?"  "Just because this has always been the way, is this the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?"  To the questioner, nothing is sacred.  He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead.  He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting.  He stirs unrest.  As with all life, this is a paradox, for his irreverence is rooted in a deep reverence for the enigma of life, and an incessant search for its meaning.

-Saul Alinsky, as extracted from here

More..................................

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Belief.......................................

No mainstream current of Christianity or Judaism promises that the prayers of the pious always will be answered. The Book of Job is there to instruct Christian and Jew that God’s purposes are so obscure to us as to make pointless the attempt to justify them. But the belief that there exists an ultimate purpose is high motivation to take a chance on the strength of our own efforts. If we do not see God’s purpose in our isolated corner of the battlefield, our children will, or our children’s children. Even if death closes out our part in the drama, God will redeem us from death. People of faith tend to have children; those who are persuaded of the randomness of existence tend not to. I cannot prove the validity of the point of view of faith, but it is instructive to consider the alternatives.

-David P. Goldman, as excerpted from this Spengler post

On the importance of language..........

I want gezelligheid in my life. I want to create a sense of gezelligheid for my loved ones. I want my home to ooze gezelligheid. I want to make people feel gezelligheid just by being around me. Lofty goals, but from the moment I learned of the word, I got it. It’s the word that expresses something that I literally yearn to have/be/create.

-Gina, as excepted from here

Time to recall the search party.........

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.  You will never life if you are looking for the meaning of life."
-Albert Camus

Question.....................................................

"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question."
-Niels Bohr

A quest...............................

"Life is a difficult question;  I have decided to spend my life thinking about it."
-Arthur Schopenhauer

And the question was asked..............................

"How much should we know?"

and the answer gently drifted by.............................

"Not so much."

Explanation: The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible to southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan, now understood to be satellite galaxies of our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy. About 160,000 light-years distant in the constellation Dorado, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is seen here in a remarkably deep, colorful, image. Spanning about 15,000 light-years or so, it is the most massive of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies and is the home of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A. The prominent patch below center is 30 Doradus, also known as the magnificent Tarantula Nebula, is a giant star-forming region about 1,000 light-years across.

Source, and enlargeable photo. is here.  I love how their explanations just raise so many more questions.  God love the explorers.