Which of these pearls of wisdom were cast by the loquacious spiritual guru and sometimes presidential candidate Marianne Williamson (here), and which by The Sphinx? Frankly, they both get pretty formulaic.
Answers will be posted Friday.
1. "We are number one. All others are number two, or lower."
2. “If a train doesn't stop at your station, then it's not your train.”
3. "He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions."
4. “You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.”
5. "You must lash out with every limb, like the octopus who plays the drums. "
6. “Always seek less turbulent skies … You are the one who is flying the plane.”
7. "When you care for what is outside, what is inside cares for you."
8. “A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose."
9. "You must be like the wolf pack, not the six-pack."
10. “And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.”
11. "To learn my teachings, I must first teach you how to learn."
12. “Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we keep trying to slay them in the outer world. "
So long as Marianne Williamson lasts in the Democratic primaries, we will have Peace, Love, and Understanding, just like in The Summer of Love back in the 60s. The early part anyway, like from Woodstock up to but not including Altamont. After that it got less lovely.
Our current administration actively cuts peace-building programs that are statistically proven to increase the incidence of peace and reduce conflict, despite their efficacy.
Our country's priorities are clearly reflected in our budget. The Defense Department has a military budget of $718 billion – almost larger than that of all other nations combined – while our State Department budget – including all peace-creation agencies – is $40 billion. The independent U.S. Institute of Peace has a budget of only $36.8 million.
Internationally, I will appoint a world class humanitarian and diplomat as Secretary of State. I will increase the budget of the State Department's peace-building agencies, that these four factors — known to statistically increase the incidence of and decrease violent conflict — might become the pillars of our peace creation agenda: expanding economic opportunities for women, expanding educational opportunities for children, decreasing violence against women, and ameliorating unnecessary human suffering wherever possible.
In addition, I will increase support for the USAID, which provides international humanitarian assistance. Desperate people are more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces, and under a Williamson administration the United States will once again be seen as a beacon of hope and possibility to the world’s most desperate people.
I'm curious about those four factors that are "known to statistically increase the incidence of [sic] and decrease violent conflict." Marianne doesn't say where we can find those statistics.
Life is made up of two dimensions: things on the outside and things on the inside. As people, we not only think, we also feel: we care not only about what is happening to our bodies but also what is happening to our souls.
America is not just having problems with what is happening to our economy, our environment, our educational system and so forth. We have a problem with the psychological fabric of our country, as a low level emotional civil war has begun in too many ways to rip us apart.
In order to deal with that, we must address it on the level of our internal being. We don’t normally associate politics with a deep level of our internal existence, but this is the 21st Century now and all of that needs to change.
Personally, I think politics belongs strictly on the outside, and has no business inside my mind, body, or soul, which are no one's business but my own. Nowhere does the Constitution create an office of Therapist-in-Chief.
But hey, it's the 21st Century now, so all that Founding Fathers stuff needs to go.