/tag/tolerance

6 quotes tagged 'tolerance'

Food of the Gods
Author: Terence McKenna
Publisher: Bantam Books (1993)
150

The strongest argument for the legalization of any drug is that society has been able to survive the legalization of alcohol. If we can tolerate the legal use of alcohol, what drug cannot be absorbed in the structure of society? We can almost see toleration of alcohol as the distinguishing feature of Western culture. This tolerance is related not only to a dominator approach to sexual politics but also to, for example, a reliance on sugar and red meat, which are complementary to an alcohol lifestyle. In spite of natural food fads and a rise in dietary awareness, the typical American adult diet continues to be one of sugar, meat, and alcohol. This 'burn out diet' is neither healthy nor ecologically sound; it promotes heart disease, abuse of the land, and toxic addiction and intoxication. It exemplifies, in short, every­thing that is wrong with us, everything that we have been left with as a result of an unhindered millennium of practicing the tenets of dominator culture. We have achieved the triumphs of the dominator style‑triumphs of high technology and scientific method‑largely through a suppression of the more untidy, emotional, and 'merely felt' aspects of our existence. Alcohol has always been there when we needed to call upon it to propel us further down this same path. Alcohol helps nerve a man for battle, helps nerve men and women for love, and keeps an authentic perspective on self and world forever at bay. It is unsettling to realize that the delicately maintained web of diplomatic agreements and treaties standing between us and nu­clear Armageddon was fabricated in the atmosphere of misguided sentimentality and blustering bravado that is typical of alcoholic personalities everywhere.


Living Buddha, Living Christ
Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Riverhead Trade (2007)
0

Many of our young people are uprooted.  They no longer believe in the traditions of their parents and grandparents, and they have not found anything else to replace them.  Spiritual leaders need to address this very real issue, but most simply do not know what to do.  They have not been able to transmit the deepest values of their traditions, perhaps because they themselves have not fully understood or experienced them.  When a priest does not embody the living values of a tradition, he or she cannot transmit them to the next generation.  He can only wear the outer garments and pass along the superficial forms.  When the living values are absent, rituals and dogmas are lifeless, rigid, and even oppressive.  Combined with a lack of understanding of people's real needs and a general lack of tolerance, it is little wonder that the young feel alienated within these institutions.


Suffering, Suicide and Immortality
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Publisher: Dover Publications (2006)
0

The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Soĉi malorum, compagnon de miséres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life - the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.


This Is It
Author: Alan Watts
Publisher: Vintage (1973)
0

You would immediately feel one with all nature, and with the universe itself, if you could understand that there is no 'you' as the hardcore thinker of thoughts, feeler of feelings, and senser of sensations, and that because your body is something in the physical world, that world is not 'external' to you.  Thus when you listen, you do not hear anyone listening.  This has nothing to do with making an effort or not making an effort; it is simply a matter of intelligence.  To find this out seems to me almost more important than understanding that the world is round, that Africans are people, and that persons with opinions other than your own will not fry forever in hell.  Fully to understand that the universe is ourselves must put an end to the frantic panic about death and to our hostile exploitation of the planet Earth.


To Have or to Be?
Author: Erich Fromm
Publisher: Continuum Impacts (2005)
0

'In short, paradoxical thought led to tolerance and an effort toward self-transformation.  The Aristotelian standpoint led to dogma and science, to the Catholic Church, and to the discovery of atomic energy.'\n


0

In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and of the pleasure routine.  Man becomes a 'nine to fiver,' he is part of the labor force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers.  He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organization of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom.  They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organization, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner.  Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction.  Fun is routinized in similar, although not quite as drastic ways.  Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theater owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is also uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties.  From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening - all activities are routinized, and prefabricated.  How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness?