updated 5h ago
Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
Why has all the fun gone out of it? Well, it is because, hundreds of years later, it was hijacked by the leaders of the Christian Church and made to serve another, grimmer purpose. What happened was that these old remembered stories from the waking days of the children of Israel were appropriated by Christian thinkers and used to perpetuate a syste
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Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
Musicians ‘hear’ a tune in their heads and rush to get it down before it fades away. Some writers are invaded by a phrase and follow it like a trail of breadcrumbs to wherever it takes them. I have spoken to distinguished painters who told me that some of their work just poured out of them onto the canvas in a manic rush they found it hard to keep
... See morefrom Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
A bit of me thinks these old writers knew exactly what they were doing when they told their tales, but not in the sense that they thought to themselves, ‘I am now going to craft a story that carries a hidden meaning which I want my readers to figure out for themselves.’
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was converted from an enduringly useful fiction into a dangerous assertion of historical fact. In their account, it wasn’t the fact that it went on happening now that mattered.
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
Augustine believed that had Adam and Eve never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would have propagated children ‘without shame at the uncontrollable stirring of their genitals’. Procreation would have been without pleasure or desire.
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
mystical experiences are clearly authoritative for the individuals who have them. We can recognise that, while also acknowledging at the same time that no authority emanates from them that can compel the assent of those who stand outside them.
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
We’ve done it to each other with equal callousness in the wars and purges that are a constant feature of our history, not to mention the genocides and organised persecutions orchestrated by all those ruthless optimists with their perfect plans for our salvation.
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
those who believe there is no meaning to the universe are not thereby spared suffering – no one is – but for them it is not a moral problem, only an unpleasant fact.
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago
Did Jesus really think that bums and beggars were actually blessed by God, as if all the destitute were nice people and all the aristocrats correspondingly evil? Is this some sort of romantic delusion about the charms of destitution?
from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway
Keane Moraes added 3mo ago