"To have autonomy without interdependency leads to isolation or narcissism. To have interdependency with no autonomy stunts our psychological growth. Healthy people live in social groups that have learned to balance or, better, marry these two imperatives.” ― Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human
“It’s very easy to imagine a company that succeeds in dominating the VR universe quickly stockpiling intimate data on not just what you and three billion other people ‘favorite’ but . . . a thousand other details. To do that in real life would be expensive and intrusive. To do that in VR will be invisible and cheap.” Soon VR systems are going to track everything from eye gaze to vocal tone to—as DARPA-style biometrics get further integrated—neurochemistry, hormones, brainwaves, and cardiac coherence. “This comprehensive tracking of your behavior inside these worlds,” continues [Kevin] Kelly, “could be used to sell you things, to redirect your attention, to compile a history of your interests, to persuade you subliminally, to quantify your actions for self-improvement . . . and so on. If a smartphone is a surveillance device we voluntarily carry in our pocket, then VR will be a total surveillance state we voluntarily enter.” “In [George Orwell’s] 1984 . . . people are controlled by inflicting pain,” wrote NYU professor Neil Postman. “In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fears will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.” And while the possibility of a nation deliberately invading our minds to shape and control behavior may feel like a relic of Cold War paranoia, the prospect of multinational corporations deliberately tweaking our subconscious desires to sell us more stuff is already here.
"You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions." Bessel Van Der Kolk - The Body Keeps The Score
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire—then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer.
"Don't all those little tweets, don't all those little sips of online communication, add up to one big gulp of real conversation?"-Stephen Colbert
Your true worth is not defined by what you were given, but by what you have earned and done for yourself
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely. ~Roald Dahl
There is only failure when you give up. As long as you haven't given up yet, you are still in the race.