Flaker of Flints

Let's see what happens if the prisoners are released from the cave. At first, when one of them is freed and has to stand up, turn his neck around, walk, and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains. The glare will hurt him, and he won't be able to see the realities whose shadows he'd seen in the cave. Then someone tells him that what he saw before was an illusion, and that now, when he is closer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision. What will be his reply? Imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and making him name them. Won't he be perplexed? Won't he think that the shadows he used to see are truer than the objects he sees now?

...In my view, these simply aren’t the sort of outcomes that you expect from atoms blindly interacting according to the laws of physics.  These are, instead, the signatures of higher-level causation—and specifically, of a teleological force that operates in our universe to make it distinctively cruel and horrible...

If all eyes were made of green glass, and if all that seems white was really green, who would be the wiser?

Elisha’s servant got up early and went out. He saw an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. [The] servant said to Elisha, “Oh, no! Master, what will we do?” “Don’t be afraid,” Elisha said, “because there are more of us than there are of them.” Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he saw that the mountain was full of horses and fiery chariots surrounding Elisha.

...Jeremiah had seen what there was for all to see if only they would look, but the others refused to look, simply denied, and were unable to see. The royal folk had for so long lived in a protective, fake world that their perceptual field was skewed and with their best looking they could not see what was there to see...

Successful hills are here to stay. Everything must be this way. Gentle streets where people play. Welcome to the Soft Parade. All our lives we sweat and save, Building for a shallow grave. Must be something else, we say, Somehow to defend this place. Everything must be this way. Everything must be this way.

...The knight of faith drains the deep sadness of life in infinite resignation, he knows the blessedness of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything, the most precious thing in the world, and yet the finite tastes just as good to him as to one who never knew anything higher, because his remaining in finitude would have no trace of a fearful, anxious routine, and yet he has this security that makes him delight in it as if finitude were the surest thing of all. And yet—and yet!—the whole earthly figure he presents is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He is continually making the movement of infinity, but he does it with such precision and assurance that he continually gets finitude out of it, and no one ever suspects anything else...

We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against princes, rulers, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.

One reason for the interest in phase transitions is scale invariance: the fluctuations that exist near the critical point occur on all possible length and time scales. A second reason for our interest is called universality: the striking similarity in behavior near the critical point among systems that are quite different from each other far from the critical point.... How can correlations actually extend an infinite distance away, without requiring a series of amplification stations all along the way? We can understand such “infinite-range propagation” as arising from the huge multiplicity of interaction paths that connect two atoms in dimensions greater than one. (In one dimension, there is no multiplicity of interaction paths, and atoms become aligned only at absolute zero temperature.)

I am not equal to my longing. Somewhere there should be a place the exact shape of my emptiness— there should be a place responsible for taking one back.