Non Understanding Friend Quotes

I go to bed and before falling asleep I talk to Lucas in my head the way I have for many years. What I tell him is just about what I usually do. I tell him that if he's dead he's lucky and I'd very much like to be in his place. I tell him that he got the better deal, that it is I who is pulling the greater weight. I tell him that life is totally useless, that it's nonsense, an aberration, infinite suffering, the invention of a non-God whose evil surpasses understanding. ~ Agota Kristf

Radionics was conceived as a diagnostic and treatment technology at a time when modern electronic theory and biomedicine had not become the dominant sciences they are today. Early radionic devices incorporated the new discoveries of radio and electronics into their design. During that period, the functional assumptions of radionic technology did not seem as implausible as it does today. However, it wasn't long before radionics became outmoded and completely non-scientific. As Mizrach has noted, radionics continued to appropriate the methods of orthodox science into its design and terminology, making the probability of understanding what it could accomplish even more difficult to assess. I will examine this appropriation in a spirit of tolerance, given the state of electronics and medicine circa 1910, when radionics was first discovered. I will do so in order to shift the focus of this interesting technology from the scientific to the metaphysical, where the reader not limited by a need for scientific approval can evaluate it. My aim is to provide a reasonable means of evaluating radionic technology as an artistic methodology. ~ Duncan Laurie

Long regarded as central to the contemporary understanding of medical ethics are four principles that must be satisfied in order to fulfill the requirements of moral decision-making. These principles are autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans and elements of the local non-Jewish populations closer together. Anger was directed, as the Germans wished, toward the Jews, rather than against collaborators with the Soviet regime as such. People who reacted to the Germans' urging knew that they were pleasing their new masters, whether or not they believed that the Jews were responsible for their own woes. By their actions they were confirming the Nazi worldview. The act of killing Jews as revenge for NKVD executions confirmed the Nazi understanding of the Soviet Union as a Jewish state. Violence against Jews also allowed local Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles who had themselves cooperated with the Soviet regime to escape any such taint. The idea that only Jews served communists was convenient not just for the occupiers but for some of the occupied as well.
Yet this psychic nazification would have been much more difficult without the palpable evidence of Soviet atrocities. The pogroms took place where the Soviets had recently arrived and where Soviet power was recently installed, where for the previous months Soviet organs of coercion had organized arrests, executions, and deportations. They were a joint production, a Nazi edition of a Soviet text.

P. 196 ~ Timothy Snyder

For many ages it has been allowed by sensible men, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu: That is, There is nothing in the understanding which was not first perceived by some of the senses. All the knowledge which we naturally have is originally derived from our senses. And therefore those who want any sense cannot have the least knowledge or idea of the objects of that sense; as they that never had sight have not the least knowledge or conception of light or colours. ~ John Wesley

You will never find a faery at a science fair. Why? Because science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical, well-explained packages. The fey are magical, capricious, illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries, so naturally we do not exist. That type of non-belief is fatal to faeries. ~ Julie Kagawa

Other animals are exceptionally good at identifying and reacting to predators, rivals and friends. They never act as if they believe that rivers or trees are inhabited by spirits who are watching. In all these ways, other animals continually demonstrate their working knowledge that they live in a world brimming with other minds as well as their knowledge of those minds' boundaries. their understanding seems more acute, pragmatic, and frankly, better than ours at distinguishing real from fake. So, I wonder, do humans really have a better developed Theory of Mind than other animals? ...Children talk to dolls for years, half believing or firmly believing that the doll hears and feels and is a worthy confidante. Many adults pray to statues, fervently believing that they're listening. ...All of this indicates a common human inability to distinguish conscious minds from inanimate objects, and evidence from nonsense. Children often talk to a fully imaginary friends whom they believe listens and has thoughts. Monotheism might be the adult version. ...In the world's most technologically advanced, most informed societies, a majority people take it for granted that disembodied spirits are watching, judging, and acting on them. Most leaders of modern nations trust that a Sky-God can be asked to protect their nation during disasters and conflicts with other nations. All of this is theory of mind gone wild, like an unguided fire hose spraying the whole universe with presumed consciousness. ~ Carl Safina

Now with the allocation and the understanding of the lack of understanding, we enter into a new era of science in which we feel nothing more than so much so as to say that those within themselves, comporary or non-comporary, will figuratively figure into the folding of our non-understanding and our partial understanding to the networks of which we all draw our source and conclusions from. ~ Reggie Watts

Enlightenment is the realization that all is as it should be. Everything is perfect as it is. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve. Enlightenment is a state of non-doing, of effortlessness. Enlightenment is the feeling that you are at home in existence. You are part of the whole. You don't exist separately, all separation has disappeared. Enlightenment is the understanding that all is good and that all is an tremendous harmony. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

And now the thought came to me that I lived much of my life through the pages of books as well. That perhaps I, too, was only a paper figure. A cut-out, or silhouette. Flat.
I always thought I knew the shape of my life. Of course I thought I knew about life, thought I knew all I needed - or wanted - to know. And yet, like the opening left when a burning star falls from its perch, now an unexpected hole was left in what was once a solid curtain of understanding... ( )... Sitting under the cold stars, I understood that it was death that made me recognize life, and the existence, or pherhaps the non-existence of my own beeing. ~ Linda Holeman

Our belief in a world external to ourselves, filled with things and people that are not us, is an overwhelming fact of our existence. But similarly, our absolute certainty that there is more to reality than just this physical world is a spiritual fact that bears more truth than any other in our lives. We seek to explain this spiritual nature as some metaphysical reality, accepting the constraint of Science that will not allow for any usurpation of the actuality of the physical universe. And we flounder trying. Once we allow our thoughts to be forced into some metaphysical realm, we find ourselves stripped of that single most important validation of spiritual truth – the undeniable presence at the heart of our existence. This is the spiritual truth that we seek, and it is not to be found in the physical reality of Science. The physical reality of Science is to be found in it! "An Introduction to Awareness" is a philosophical journey that takes the reader into the heart of this pure presence of nondual reality – a reality in which the spiritual is not metaphysical, but actual, in which physical reality is 'a machine in the ghost'. This pure presence that we cannot deny is the awareness that lies at the heart of our experiences and thoughts. This irrefutable truth is used as a starting point in a processual analysis of awareness, and of our ideas about existence and self, leading to a clear understanding of the nondual nature of reality as the pure presence of non-individuated A ~ James M. Corrigan

Love as Thought is Truth.
Love as Action is Right Conduct.
Love as Understanding is Peace.
Love as Feeling is Non-violence. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. ~ John Shelby Spong

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~ George Bernard Shaw

A survey of oceanic (i.e. remote) islands found that, as far back as records exist, they have been accumulating alien plants. In 1860 the average oceanic island had less than 1 introduced plant for every 10 natives. By 1940 the ratio was 1 alien for every 2 natives, and today the ratio is about 1:1. Despite all these new arrivals there have been very few extinctions among the original inhabitants, so the number of plant species on such islands has approximately doubled. Thus, although left to themselves remote islands tend to have rather few species (compared to similar continental areas at the same latitude), so many species have been introduced to Hawaii that it now has as many plants as a similar area of Mexico. Moreover, the evidence suggests that remote islands are by no means 'full' of plants, and that there is room for even more alien plants to establish, and thus for total plant diversity to increase: at the current rate the average oceanic island will have 3 aliens for every 2 natives by 2060. Do we have any idea how many different plant species might eventually be able to coexist on an island like Hawaii? No, we don't. Or, to express that conclusion in a more general form, in a report from US ecologists Dov Sax and Steve Gaines: 'we have a relatively poor understanding of the processes that ultimately limit how many species can inhabit any given place or area ~ Ken Thompson

When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you. Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand ... but just how far and in what form? At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding, of all theology and ecclesial wisdom. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

The feeling of not being understood and of not understanding the world is no mere accompaniment of first passion, but its sole non-accidental cause. And the passion itself is a panic-stricken flight in which being together with the other means only a doubled solitude. ~ Robert Musil

Insects, birds, and small game all chattered, yet for a while, they sat in peace. In an odd way, connection and understanding thrived on the non-words. The forest spoke like God's voice, alive and real, leaving healing and hope in the wake of silence. ~ Michelle Griep

With non-professionals, there's a lot of time you have to allocate to getting what you want with them, but also you cast based on who they are, to bring out their real personalities. So it's less about working on character and more about just getting them comfortable in front of the camera to be themselves, and understanding the process. ~ Charles Burnett

Of course we need to accept ourselves as we are, but we can't stop there. We also need to value ourselves enough make needed changes. ~ Steve Goodier

The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
Physics and Philosophy ~ Werner Heisenberg

Recognising our own mistakes helps us to empathise non-judgementally with others and helps enable us to understand their issues. ~ Jay Woodman

If one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point. Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. He will have to hold that if he cannot attain to such an exhaustive understanding of reality he has no true knowledge of anything at all. Either man must then know everything or he knows nothing. This is the dilemma that confronts every form of non-Christian epistemology ~ Cornelius Van Til

[After a period of separation, Phaeton and Daphne are cuddling.]

Diomedes, meanwhile, was leaning to look behind Helion, staring with open fascination at the display Phaethon and Daphne made. "I have not seen non-parthenogenic bioforms before. Are they going to copulate?"

Atkins and Helion looked at him, then looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them.

Atkins put his hand on Diomedes's elbow, and pulled him back in front of Helion. "Perhaps not at this time," Atkins said, straight-faced.

"They are young and in love," explained Helion, stepping so as to block Diomedes's view. "So perhaps the excesses and, ah, exuberance of their, ah, greeting, can be overlooked this once."

Diomedes craned his neck, trying to peer past Helion. "There's nothing like that on Neptune."

Helion murmured, "Perhaps certain peculiarities of the Neptunian character are thereby clarified, hmm…?"

"It looks very old-fashioned," said Diomedes.

Helion said, "It is that most ancient and most precious romantic character of mankind which impels all great men to their greatness."

Atkins said, "It's what young men do before they go to war."

Diomedes said, "It is not the way Cerebellines or Compositions or Hermaphrodites or Neptunians arrange these matters. I'm not sure I see the value of it. But it looks interesting. Do all Silver-Gray get to do that? I wonder if Phaethon would mi ~ John C. Wright

All use of speech implies convention and therefore at least duality of minds. The problem of communication through language may in this light be seen as the search for the means supplied by the conventions (or code) to transmit a message from one mind to another. (This definition is as applicable to "literary" communication as it is to "non-literary.") ...Is the code exactly the same for transmitter and receiver? Indeed, can it ever be? It hardly seems likely, since in the strict sense no two people have ever acquired exactly the same code. Consequently, the correspondence between the writer's understand of his writing (I do not, of course, mean merely a conscious or reflective understanding) and the reader's understanding of it will be at least approximate. Another variable is the mental, emotional, and cultural constitution of the being who used the code to transmit a message, and of the being who decodes it. To what extent are they capable of understanding each other? To what extent will they be willing to cooperate in dealing with the inevitable problems in communication? To what extent will anticipated or actual reaction ("feedback") from the receiver affect the framing of the message? Perhaps more important than any of these variables, there is the as yet unresolved question of the very nature of language, and therefore of communication through language. What do agreed upon symbols stand for? Is it conceivable that they correspond to something objectively identifiable? ~ Robert Ellrich

Understanding America for the Non-American Black: American Tribalism In America, tribalism is alive and well. There are four kinds - class, ideology, region, and race. First, class. Pretty easy. Rich folk and poor folk. Second, ideology. Liberals and conservatives. They don't merely disagree on political issues, each side believes the other is evil. Intermarriage is discouraged and on the rare occasion that it happens, is considered remarkable. Third, region. The North and the South. The two sides fought a civil war and tough stains from that war remain. The North looks down on the South while the South resents the North. Finally, race. There's a ladder of racial hierarchy in America. White is always on top, specifically White ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as on is, not as on wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and there for fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires and extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is, is constantly undergoing transformation, change; and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value. The understanding of what you are, whatever it be – ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous – the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Most people who've never experienced non-ordinary states of consciousness and only hear them described tend to try to describe them in terms of the logical, rational way of looking at things, the so-called scientific explanation, which often leaves a lot lacking and doesn't really fulfill understanding the experience at all. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there." And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness," King said. "Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. ... This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces. ~ Robert A. Caro

In order to understand why one chooses to be a Tantric practitioner, there has to be an understanding of cause and effect, cyclic existence, the awareness that the reality that we think we are seeing is not reality as it really truly is. So enlightenment is seeing reality with bare awareness, non-conceptual reality. ~ Zeena Schreck

Of these five vital principles, Love is the foremost. It is Love that flows as the under-current for the other four values. How does it flow this way? When Love is associated with our thoughts, it manifests itself as Truth. When Love is associated with feelings, it produces Peace. When Love animates actions, it results in Right Action. When Love is combined with understanding it becomes Non-violence. Therefore whenever you feel angry, think of love, develop thoughts of love in your heart. You will have peace. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

The reason that I have concentrated on non-computability, in my arguments, rather than on complexity, is simply that it is only with the former that I have been able to see how to make the necessary strong statements. It may well be that in the working lives of most mathematicians, non-computability issues play, if anything, only a very small part. But that is not the point at issue. I am trying to show that (mathematical) understanding is something that lies beyond computation, and the Godel (-Turing) argument is one of the few handles that we have on that issue. It is quite probable that our mathematical insights and understandings are often used to achieve things that could in principle also be achieved computationally-but where blind computation without much insight may turn out to be so inefficient that it is unworkable (cf. 3.26). However, these matters are much more difficult to address than the non-computability issue. ~ Roger Penrose

Manifesting your desires requires an understanding of the universe's abundance and inherently giving nature. If you ask from a position of fear or desperation, you are sending out your fear and desperation, and the universe, giving, reflecting, and non-judgmental as it is, will send those right back at you. ~ Stephen Richards

Gandhian nonviolence as interpreted in Naess:
1. The character of the means used in a group struggle determines the character of the results.

2. In a group struggle you can keep the goal-directed motivation and the ability to work effectively for the realization of the goal stronger than the destructive, violent tendencies, and the tendencies to passivity, despondency, or destruction, only by making a constructive program part of your campaign and by giving all phases of your struggle, as far as possible a positive character.

3. Short-term violence contradicts long-term universal reduction of violence.

4. You can give a struggle a constructive character only if you conceive of it and carry it out as a struggle in favour of living beings and certain values, thus eventually fighting antagonisms, not antagonists.

5. It increases your understanding of the conflict, of the participants, and of your own motivation, to live together with the participants, especially with those for whom you primarily fight. The most adequate form for living together is that of jointly doing constructive work.

6. If you live together with those for whom you primarily struggle and do constructive work with them, this will create a natural basis for trust and confidence in you.

7. All human (and non-human) beings have long-term interests in common.

8. Cooperation on common goals reduces the chance that the actions and at ~ Arne Næss

Well, I do think, particularly the way I work, the better images occur when you're moving to the fringes of your own understanding. That's where self-doubt and risk taking are likely to occur. It's when you trust what's happening at a non-intellectual non-conscious level that you can produce work that later resonates, often in a way that you can't articulate a response to. ~ Jerry Uelsmann

The dominance panacea is so out of proportion that entire schools of training are based on the premise that if you can just exert adequate dominance over the dog, everything else will fall into place. Not only does it mean that incredible amounts of abuse are going to be perpetrated against any given dog, probably exacerbating problems like unreliable recalls and biting, but the real issues, like well-executed conditioning and the provision of an adequate environment, are going to go unaddressed, resulting in a still-untrained dog, perpetuating the pointless dominance program. None of this is to say that dogs aren't one of those species whose social life appears to lend itself to beloved hierarchy constructs. But, they also see well at night, and no one is proposing retinal surgery to address their non-compliance or biting behavior. Pack theory is simply not the most elegant model for explaining or, especially, for treating problems like disobedience, misbehavior or aggression. People who use aversives to train with a dominance model in mind would get a better result with less wear and tear on the dog by using aversives with a more thorough understanding of learning theory, or, better yet, forgoing aversives altogether and going with the other tools in the learning theory tool box. The dominance concept is simply unnecessary. ~ Jean Donaldson

I think the entire message of the psychedelic experience, which is basically the sine qua non of the rebirth of alchemical understanding, the very basis of that understanding is that nature seeks to communicate. ~ Terence McKenna