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87cf9c5
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Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
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worship
god
idols
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David Foster Wallace |
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eea716e
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"Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers." "
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gilding
disillusionment
idols
touch
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Gustave Flaubert |
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eaf8877
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The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.
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love-disappointment
idols
idolatry
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Gustave Flaubert |
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68f0b36
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But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously -- after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. (Most of his fans were just as ignorant and unlettered; the disease was spreading.)
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entertainers
mistaken-attribution
idols
opinions
rationality
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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28518c6
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The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity. Gods must keep their distances from men.
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worship
idols
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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528db5f
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But vilifying those we love always alienates us from them to a certain extent. Idols should not be touched: the gilding comes off on the hands.
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relationships
love
idols
classics
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Gustave Flaubert |
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b49b2b3
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The absolutely alienated individual worships at the altar of an idol, and it makes little difference by what names this idol is known.
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individual
idols
projection
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Erich Fromm |
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b2af42a
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I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper needs.
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idols
modernity
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Ray Bradbury |