not all those who wander are lost
more than anything, literature and food
(Source: buriedsnail, via thewondermentwoods)
I refuse to beat my chest over a grief that belongs to others, or shout about how terrorists messed with the wrong city. I find no virtue in braying over the capture of a teenager whose toxic grievances, and misguided loyalties, led to such senseless ruin. It is sad, all of it. The greater sadness for me is that America feels increasingly like a nation united by spectacles of atrocity. We pay attention, and open our hearts, only when violence of a random and gaudy enough variety strikes.
Steve Almond in The New Republic (via washingtonpoststyle)
I agree so completely.
(via washingtonpoststyle)
Photographer Lalage Snow takes pictures of soldiers’ faces before, during and after the war in Afghanistan.
(via thewondermentwoods)
I think my purpose in life is to be contrary.
Last week in section, my neuro TA wanted to have a philosophical discussion (we read Camus and Husserl after all!) on epistemology, phenomenology, and of course its relation to empirical science, especially its validity in, say, understanding consciousness. I was basically the only student engaged in the discussion. Furthermore, I was basically the only one not confused by or disdainful of philosophical thought. I found myself getting frustrated with my peers—apparently already as narrow-minded as we reductionists are often accused of being!—and defending the value of philosophy. Then, in that same day, during section for my English class (a class called Desire), while my peers brought up personal experience and such-and-such, I talked about the neuroscience behind attraction, sex, and pair-bonding. They said to me, half-impressed, half-bemused, “What major are you?” They were better than the first set, but I found myself once again frustrated that they couldn’t understand that a simplification of something so very human doesn’t render it any less human. Science is not necessarily the art of dehumanizing.
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(Source: ecs917)
