“This isolation has left Americans quite unaware of the world beyong their borders. Americans speak few languages, know little about foreign cultures, and remain unconvinced that they need to rectify this. Americans rarely benchmark to global standards because they are sure that their way must be the best and most advanced. There is a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the one hand and the majority of the American people on the other. Without real efforts to bridge it, this divide could destroy America's competitive edge and its political future.”
"The deceivers started with self-deception. Probably because of their high station and their astounding self-assurance, they were so convinced of overwhelming success..."
— Hannah Arendt
Hope is stubborn. It exists in us at the cellular level and works up from there, as part of the urge to live. So hope will persist. The question is, can we put it to use? \\
--KIM STANLEY ROBINSON (cited in Homer-Dixon, Thomas. Commanding Hope (p. v). Knopf Canada. Kindle Edition.
A certain awesome futurity, then, is the inescapable condition of word-giving—as it is, in fact, of all speech—for we speak into no future that we know, much less into one that we desire, but into one that is unknown. But that it is unknown requires us to be generous toward it, and requires our generosity to be full and unconditional. The unknown is the mercy and it may be the redemption of the known. The given word may come to appear to be wrong, or wrongly given. But the unknown still lies ahead of it, and so who is finally to say? If time has apparently proved it wrong, more time may prove it right. As growth has called it into question, further growth may reaffirm it.
Attentional balance, including the development of sustained, voluntary attention, is a crucial feature of mental health and optimal performance in any kind of meaningful activity.
And the deeper-dive quote for today, short but pungent, from Hannah Arendt:
Indoctrination is dangerous because it springs primarily from a perversion, not of knowledge, but of understanding. The result of understanding is meaning, which we originate in the very process of living insofar as we try to reconcile ourselves to what we do and what we suffer.
