Home > Author > Chester Elijah Branch
1 " Often person X can only find happiness when they feel that person Y can see how happy they are... This is the lowest level of happiness - what I call the tyranny of happiness. I like how Brian Miller draws a contrast between the tyranny of happiness and true joy.“Unlike [the tyranny of] happiness, joy is never in our power. It’s not something we can make or choose for ourselves. Instead it’s the sensation that Lewis says jumps under one’s ribs, tickles down one’s back, makes one forget meals and keeps one delighted. It’s an enormous comfort, under all this pressure to be happy, to remember that you don’t have to be in control. You can instead be surprised by joy. – B. Miller "
― Chester Elijah Branch ,
2 " Many groups use the media and successfully manipulate what Theodor Adorno calls our psychological frailty. This psychological frailty correlates to anxiety. It also precedes and foments fascism, sexism, and racism.Because of our sense of free will, day-to-day anxiety can creep in as a form of guilt or the desire to belong / be loved.It is this frailty that is manipulated which may later be expressed in fascism, nationalism, sexism, racism.It's based on superego storytelling. But what's going on concurrent with all this is a shift from storytelling to storymaking.There's an entire subgroup, mostly the younger generations, that have been participating in gaming and social media in a way that will bring about a new synergy. This is Hegel's dialect approach to society.Jane McGonigal talks about this in her book Reality is Broken, Cathy Davis talks about this in her book Now You See It, Clay Shirky talks about this in his books Cognitive Surplus and Here Comes Everybody. Tapscott talks about this in his book Wikinomics. "
3 " To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message. "
― Chester Elijah Branch
4 " people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative. "
― Chester Elijah Branch , Holy Subtext: Meta-Narrative Trends in Cinema
5 " Nietzsche said we will never rid ourselves of God because we have too much faith in grammar/language. Lacan said because of the religious tenets of language, religion will triumph.Chomsky, master linguist, says 'there are no skeptics. You can discuss it in a philosophy seminar but no human being can - in fact - be a skeptic.'These musings shed light on Soren K's leap to faith idea. This is more nuanced than the circular leap of faith argument he's been wrongly accused of...Soren is saying that, as we use the logic of language to express existence and purpose, we will always leap TO faith in a superior, all encompassing, loving force that guides our lives.This faith does not negate our reason. It simply implies that the reasoning of this superior force is superior to our own. Edwin Abbott crystalizes this in Flatland. "
6 " The continental philosopher comes to a philosophical conversation looking to have a communal experience where both sides learn from each other. Their perspective is often that we may be on different paragraphs but we are all on the same page. They’ll often speak in stories as an attempt to create a world where everyone listening works together to create agreed upon language/inside jokes/slang. By contrast, the analytic philosopher often comes to a philosophical conversation looking to win an argument. They often have a set of patterns, labels and pre-packaged arguments. To them, clever double speak and long drawn out narratives are not profound. They’ll often label it halfway through as just a bunch of made up gibberish that leaves things even more confusing than before. It is as if the analytic philosopher says to the continental philosopher ‘you are speaking gibberish’ and the continental philosopher responds with ‘exactly. "
7 " So much of philosophy and theology is just defining terms and then agreeing on those defined terms. One person says unicorns don’t exist but another says ‘so what’s a rhino?’… it’s basically a unicorn that exists. This is a huge part of the Garden of Eden story. Humanity spends their days defining the reality around them. It was just easier when there were less people around. "
8 " The meritocratic spectrum of self-determinist, self-help, books are as follows: on one end there’s the ___ steps towards a path to true bliss. On the other end of the spectrum there’s the ___ steps to cope with not reaching a path of true bliss. "
