Quotes: Choosing - and being allowed to choose - your own direction

Men on individuality

When I was in high school and college in the late '90s and early '00s, I wrote down these passages to ponder.

"He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. ... Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing."
John Stuart Mill, "Liberty and Individuality," from On Liberty (1859)

"[Living in the eternal moment] means, rather, making one's decisions in freedom and responsibility, in self-awareness and in accord with one's own unique character as a person."
Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself (1953), p 272

"The degree of our freedom and self-determination varies with the level which we realize to be our self — the source from which we act."
Alan Watts, Nature, Man, and Woman (1958), p 135

Women say

Later, I noticed these:

"Leading transies is like trying to herd cats."
Cathy Platine www.gallae.com
Note: I found this c. 1998. As seen in 2023, the website says: "Established in 1998 with public rituals held at the Serpent Mound in south central Ohio we moved to New York in 2002 with the purchase of an ageing Silver age Catskill resort inn. We incorporated in 2005 with the formal dedication of the Phrygianum property and transfer of the deed to the corporation."

"Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore."
Lady Gaga, quoted in the Gulfport, Miss., Sun Herald, quoted in The Week, Dec. 21, 2012, p. 15.

It's not only about what you choose to do, but what you're allowed to do

Thing is, you can choose your own direction, but there are also social consequences to doing so. These consequences fall unequally on different sorts of people. And some people are punished no matter what they choose. In 2023, I think about things like this (April 23, 2023 tweet):

Quotes on the nature/nurture theories of growth

Natalie Angier mentioned David S. Moore's book The Dependent Gene which explores the meaning of genetic determination. "No matter how seemingly hard-wired a trait...the outside finds its way in, and the inside responds."

2003 marked the 50th anniversary of James D. Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of DNA. As Angier put it, "The molecule that for so long exemplified youthful bravado, vast promise and vaster self-regard has become another aging, pot-bellied baby boomer." She interviewed many scientists who agreed that we are created by a combination of our environment and our genes. After all, "DNA, on its own, does nothing." It contains instructions for making special proteins, but it needs to be surrounded by proteins who can carry out the instructions.

Barbara J. King wrote:

But we do not inherit a gene "for" shyness" or a gene "for" depression or a gene "for" spirituality; at most, we may inherit a tendency to express shy qualities or aspects of depression or spiritual yearnings when the environmental context – including the expression of belongingness in our lives – is ripe for that expression.

Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "If innate only means possible, or likely in certain environments, then everything we do is innate and the word has no meaning." Rollo May wrote: "Everyone who has observed his own development with wonder will be aware that there is both nature and nurture in every step of this actualization of his potentialities."

Paulo Coelho wrote:

"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.

"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote:

"Well, when I [Jenny Boylan] was a man, it was something I decided I'd do. It was something that I woke up every morning and convinced myself I could do, that it was something that I had to do." * * * Barbara looked alarmed. "You mean you [Richard Russo, her husband] could have decided to be anybody?" "Not anybody, but the person I became. I think we are who we are because consciously, or unconsciously, we choose ourselves." * * * The conversation we had about how and whether people 'choose' to be themselves has stayed with me, though – and it is interesting how you spoke of deciding consciously to become yourself. It was interesting that Barb said she couldn't imagine this, and that the idea of choosing fate like that was strange to her. It gave me the helpful insight that I really did 'choose' to be Jim every single day, but that once I put my sword down I haven't chosen Jenny at all; I simply wake up and here I am.

Amos Oz wrote:

"Let me teach you that Man does not walk by chance. Moreover, Man does not walk."

"What do you mean, Man does not walk?"

"Simply this: Man does not walk except to where he is led. And he is not led except to where his heart desires, and his heart does not desire unless the desire be from the depths of his soul."

Sources

"Not Just Genes: Moving Beyond Nature vs. Nurture" by Natalie Angier. www.nytimes.com Feb. 25, 2003.

Barbara J. King. Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2007. p. 199.

Stephen Jay Gould. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W. W. Norton and Co, 1981. p. 330.

Rollo May, Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1972. p 122.

Paulo Coelho. The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream. (1988) Translated by Alan R. Clarke. (1993) New York: HarperCollins, 1998. p 20.

Jennifer Finney Boylan. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders. New York: Broadway Books, 2003. p 161-2, 180.

Amos Oz. In the Land of Israel. (1983) Translated by Maurie Goldberg-Bartura. USA: Harcourt, Inc., 1993. pp. 14-15.

Begin where you are, evolve into yourself

Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek:

"Leadership expert Warren Bennis has said that ‘letting the self emerge is the essential task of leaders.’ He cites a study of the advice that top executives would give to younger ones, in which three recommendations surfaced: first, take advantage of every opportunity; second, aggressively search for meaning; and third, know yourself. Authors Bill George and Peter Sims call it finding your ‘true north’ – ‘the internal compass that guides you successfully through life. It represents who you are as a human being at your deepest level. It is your orienting point.’"

Uzma Aslam Khan:

"I mean, he died the way he needed to, without saying who he was, because he is Zahoor. He is becoming. If you leave behind definable tracks, people first point to them, then own you, then put you in a box. That leaves your poor spirit with an impossible burden. But a soul not bent with the weight of mortals wanders freely. We will remember your grandfather in an infinite number of ways."

J. Krishnamurti:

"We must create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you become intelligent, so that you are able to face the world and understand it, not just conform to it, so that inwardly, deeply, psychologically you are in constant revolt; because it is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition."

Diana Butler Bass:

“Contemporary thinkers have noted the change – and the new role that storytelling plays in our lives. Sociologist Anthony Giddons claims that our identity is found "in the on-going story about the self" and further asserts that "each of us not only 'has' but lives a biography." Moral philosopher Charles Taylor says that we understand life as an "unfolding story" in which "we grasp our lives as narrative." Put simply, we become ourselves as we tell our stories. We cannot know ourselves apart from our stories – stories in which we are both author and actor.”

Brian Klaas:

“it’s important to understand that within the logic of these media universes—be it in Russia or with Fox in the United States—that you can’t defeat a “nothing is true and everything is possible” worldview with better facts.

As Pomerantsev told me: “The big mistake people make is to think: ‘What if we just give them the facts?’ It’s got nothing to do with that,” Pomerantsev says. “You’ve got to understand what you’re dealing with. They’re giving people a sense of identity, giving people meaning and giving people a way to interpret the world.”

There is a generational battle over reality in the United States. That is the political showdown that will determine the political future of the country—and whether democracy survives. For the foreseeable future, the nexus of Trumpworld and Fox News will remain the most powerful weapon that aids the forces of “unreality.””

Sources

Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek. Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Uzma Aslam Khan. The Geometry of God. Clockroot Books, 2009. Kindle Location 3155

J. Krishnamurti. Think on These Things. ed. by D. Rajagopal. New York: Perennial, 1964. pp. 12-13.

Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. p. 138.

Brian Klaas. How Fox "News" Mimics Russian Propaganda Tactics. The Garden of Forking Paths. May 14, 2024.

Is there a true self?

Martin Laird wrote:

"There is a lot of talk in contemporary theology and philosophy about what a "self" is. One wonders how much of it Paul would have been able to follow, or care about for that matter. But he does have something evocative to contribute: your life, your "self," who you truly are, is something that is "hidden in Christ in God." Whatever there is about human identity that can be objectively known, measured, predicted, observed, whether by the Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, the tax man, or the omniscient squint of your most insightful aunt, there is a foundational core of what we might as well call identity that remains hidden from scrutiny's grip and somehow utterly caught up in God, 'in whom we live and move and have our being,' in whom our very self is immersed."

Uzma Aslam Khan wrote in the novel The Geometry of God:

"That is the ultimate goal of his devotion: to revert to his original self. It's a belief in pre-existence. Or extinction. You could say the Sufi is the original evolutionist."

Or is there no "foundational core," no "original self"? Shunryu Suzuki wrote:

"What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale."

Sources

Martin Laird, O.S.A. Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 13-14.

Uzma Aslam Khan. The Geometry of God. Clockroot Books, 2009. Location 77.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Quoted in Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox, Your Mythic Journey: Finding Meaning in Your Life Through Writing and Storytelling. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989. p. 19. (This is a revised version of Telling Your Story, originally published 1973.)

Also

'No Cuisine In The World Can Be Called Authentic.' Here's Why.: Food Network champion Maneet Chauhan will make you think twice next time you criticize a culture's cuisine. Sucheta Rawal, HuffPost, May 15, 2024