The Environment of Revelation
The desert is the environment of revelation, genetically and physiologically alien, sensorily austere, esthetically abstract, historically inimical. ... Its forms are bold and suggestive.
Quotations
Use it or Lose it
Every time you practice a task, you further burn into your brain the webwork of neurons responsible for carrying out that task; the more you rehearse a memory, telling it to yourself over and over, the stronger and smoother that electrochemical conversation between those particular synapses in your skull.
We Without Our Gods
[Bruce Alexander] was interested to find that there have been many times in human history when addiction was practically nil: the Canadian Indians, for instance, prior to assimilation, had a negligible addiction rate, as did our very own British brothers before the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, when people farmed and lived off the land and watched the moon, that medicinal disk in the sky.
The Werther Effect
Data from the FBI and state law enforcement agencies clearly show that after any well-publicized suicide, the number of fatalities from plane and car crashes rise.
The Coming Revolt of the Guards
The title of this chapter is not a prediction, but a hope, which I will soon explain.
Social Cuing
Across the street from me is a beautiful church with emerald moss tamped between the stones. Sometimes I go to this church, for the singing. After Sunday sermons, a collection basket gets passed around.
Stanley Milgram and Obedience to Authority
Possibly you are late. You are running down a small side street in New Haven, Connecticut. It is June 1961, and ahead of you loom the spires of the Yale Episcopalian Church.
Lösung
Sunday has come again. He and Bev Shaw are engaged in one of their sessions of Lösung.
The Pursuit of Happiness
'What is so wrong with America,' he repeated, as if it was the title of a lecture. As indeed it was.
Tower of Babble
Everywhere, words are mixing. Words and lyrics and dialogue are mixing in a soup that could trigger a chain reaction. Maybe acts of God are just the right combination of media junk thrown out into the air.