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“…Perdition catch my soul // But I do love thee! //  And when I love thee not, // Chaos is come again.”  (Othello 3.3.90-92)

 Is life fair?  Lately, some view life’s unfairness, then decide that the world–including, especially, politics–is nothing but chaos.

J.B. [the poetic drama] by Archibald MacLeish, relates, for the modern audience, the familiar story of the Biblical Job.  Both have the main character asking the recognizable likeness of “Why me?” or “What did we do to deserve this?” or “Why does it always happen to us?”  The answer? 

“MacLeish’s Job answers the problem of human suffering, not with theology or psychology, but by choosing to go on living and creating new life.”  Job looks for love.  “Instead of giving up on the unfair world and life, instead of looking outward, to churches or to nature, for answers . . . look . . . for loving.”

“Why bad things happen to good people [now becomes] no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.” — Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 1981.

*Chaos is the confusion that exists before order is established in the universe.  (See Chaos theory; John Milton and Chaos.)   

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“Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful…  All that I know now is partial and incomplete…  Three things will last forever–faith, hope, and love…–Paul 1 Cor. 13.

“Where no hope is left, is left no fear.”  –John Milton, Paradise Regained, 3:206.

“Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of Man.”  –Friedrich Nietzsche

“It is hope that maintains most of mankind.”  –Sophocles

“There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”  –Spinoza

“Hope is the only God common to all men; those who have nothing more, possess hope still.”  –Thales

from Sam Keen, Apology for Wonder (1969): “There is no hope that we can eradicate evil and tragedy–only that we can find ways of keeping the spirit alive.”

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end…  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire….”— Prayer by Thomas Merton

“…mental illness results directly from hopelessness and lack of a sense of the possible.  Wishing, willing, and hoping are essential to sanity.”  –Sam Keen

“Agnosticism and hope are not incompatible.”  — Sam Keen

“The only hope you have is to hope for the best, but don’t you get your hopes up nor hope against hope.”

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Stop all the clocks,…
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;…–W. H. Auden

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EXPERT: One who usually has advanced knowledge AND skills in a field and who UNDERSTANDS technical language and information in that field.  (He or she handles THEORY and practical applications with ease.)

PROFESSIONAL (non-expert): One who has the education and the ability to read and to understand difficult and technical information in a field.  (She or he is able to handle practical information and applications with some ease.)

GENERALIST:  A person with a broad general knowledge, especially one with more than superficial knowledge in several areas and the ability to combine ideas from diverse fields.

HUMANIST: Someone trained in the humane letters of the ancient classics, who uses those skills, or studies the humanities as opposed to the sciences.

SOCIALIST: A socialist is one who believes in “socialism” yet finds it difficult to define “socialism.”  (There are “socialists,” and then there are “socialists.”)  (One who collects monthly Social [-ist] Security income checks and complains only about the amount.) 

THEORIST: One who formulates principles or assumptions into some kind of system for understanding, whether scientific or not, or who attempts to provide explanations for “wonderosities” or “events.”

REALIST: One who deals with objective data, “just the facts”; one who “sees” practicalities, using the past and the present to extrapolate for the future.

IDEALIST: One who is not usually a pragmatist/realist, but is one who cherishes noble, often “ideal” principles.  Sometimes the idealist is seen as a visionary reformer, optimist, dreamer, perfectionist, and “romantic” with lofty goals–often impracticalities. 

PLAGIARIST:  One who dishonestly presents words or thoughts of another as if they were those of the writer or the speaker himself or herself.

OPTIMIST:  Someone who always seems to believe that good things will happen, seeing the brightness of the half-full glass, most often taking a favorable view of dire situations while predicting positive outcomes. 

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In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a new Declaration of Principles, saying: Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity.  Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents, and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society.”  [–Wikipedia]

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“We become human only on leaving Eden, mature only in realizing that childhood is over.  We come home to the fullness of our humanity only in owning and taking responsibility for present awareness as well as for the full measure of our memories and dreams.  Graceful existence integrates present, past, and future.”  –Sam Keen, To a Dancing God [1970]

Sam Keen (born 1931) is an American author, professor, and philosopher best known for his exploration of questions regarding love, life, religion, and being a man in contemporary society.  He also co-produced Faces of the Enemy, an award-winning PBS documentary; was the subject of a Bill Moyers’ television special in the early 1990s; and for 20 years served as a contributing editor at Psychology Today magazine.  [He completed his undergraduate studies at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and later completed graduate degrees at Harvard University and Princeton University.–Wikipedia]

“The story is the basic tool for the formation of identity.

“A large part of our self-concept consists of the narrative by means of which we remember and relate our past experiences.

“Human life is rendered ultimately meaningful by being incorporated into a story.

“Telling stories is functionally equivalent to belief in God.  **

“Once the individual recovers his or her history, she or he finds it is the story of every man.

“The more I know of myself, the more I recognize that nothing human is foreign to me.  In the depth of each person’s biography lies the story of all man.”

Actually, telling our story strengthens our ego:  “The very process leads the teller to become aware that he or she is a person with a unique history of triumph and tragedy, with as yet unfulfilled hopes and projects.” 

**“In exploring the significance of the metaphor of the story, I will suggest that telling stories is functionally equivalent to belief in God, and, therefore, ‘the death of God’ is best understood as modern man’s inability to believe that human life is rendered ultimately meaningful by being incorporated into a story.”  —To a Dancing God

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