“For one who sets himself to look at all earnestly, at all in purpose toward truth, into the living eyes of a human life: what is it he there beholds that so freezes and abashes his ambitious heart? What is it, profound behind the outward windows of each one of you, beneath touch even of your own suspecting, drawn tightly back at bay against the backward wall and blackness of its prison cave, so that the eyes alone shine of their own angry glory, but the eyes of a trapped wild animal, or of a furious angel nailed to the ground by his wings, or however else one may faintly designate the human ‘soul,’ that which is angry, that which is wild, that which is untamable, that which is healthful and holy, that which is competent of all advantaging within hope of human dream, that which most marvelous and most precious to our knowledge and most extremely advanced upon futurity of all flowerings within the scope of creation is of all these the least destructible, the least corruptible, the most defenseless, the most easily and multitudinously wounded, frustrated, prisoned, and nailed into a cheating of itself: so situated in the universe that those three hours upon the cross are but a noble and too trivial an emblem how in each individual among most of the two billion now alive and in each successive instant of the existence of each existence not only human being but in him the tallest and most sanguine hope of godhead is in a billionate choiring and drone of pain of generations upon generations unceasingly crucified and is bringing forth crucifixions into their necessities and is each in the most casual of his life so measurelessly discredited, harmed, insulted, poisoned, cheated, as not all the wrath, compassion, intelligence, power of rectification in all the reach of the future shall in the least expiate or make one ounce more light: how, looking thus into your eyes and seeing thus, how each of you is a creature which has never in all time existed before and which shall never in all time exist again and which is not quite like any other and which has the grand stature and natural warmth of every other and whose existence is all measured upon a still mad and incurable time; how am I to speak of you as 'tenant’ 'farmers,’ as 'representatives’ of your 'class,’ as social integers in a criminal economy, or as individuals, fathers, wives, sons, daughters, and as my friends and as I 'know’ you?” ― James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

weepingwidar:

Filippo Cegani (Italian, 1993) - Temptations (2024)

(via 389)

brurzum:

(via danskjavlarna)

“A theonym is the specific proper name of a deity.”

THINK WITH YOUR EYES

brilliant slogan from David McGillivray for Corners https://cornersnewyork.co/

“.. the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.”

Dan Simmons, Hyperion, The Poet’s Tale

thefugitivesaint:

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), ‘A Star Explodes’, “The Tatler”, Vol. 124, #1608, 1932

“If God actually chooses you he ruins you for normal life, marks you so obviously that other people can smell it on you and they will hate you for it, not consciously but in their bones, because your existence proves that settling was optional and they chose it anyway. The blessed man sleeps alone because everyone around him is engaged in a silent conspiracy to worship their own limitations and he refuses to join, and that refusal is an act of violence against the social contract. They will forgive you for being evil before they forgive you for being called” https://x.com/lichthauch/status/1994108472795734445

“When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will excercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, […and] place obstacles in the path of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent.” —Meng Tzu, 3rd century BC

proclus

Construal level theory (CLT) is a theory in social psychology that describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people’s thinking (e.g., about objects and events) is abstract or concrete.[1][2] The core idea of CLT is that the more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of. In CLT, psychological distance is defined on several dimensions—temporal, spatial, social and hypothetical distance being considered most important,[3] though there is some debate among social psychologists about further dimensions like informational, experiential or affective distance.[4] The theory was developed by the Israeli social psychologists Nira Liberman and the American psychologist Yaacov Trope.

An example of construal level effects would be that although planning one’s next summer vacation one year in advance (in the distant future) will cause one to focus on broad, decontextualized features of the situation (e.g., anticipating fun and relaxation), the very same vacation planned to occur very soon will cause one to focus on specific features of the present situation (e.g. what restaurants to make reservations for, going for a trip in an off-road vehicle). via https://x.com/hermittoday/status/1992769615055692142