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In the beginning, we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.

Sam Keen

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Sam Keen
Age: 54
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Think
Beginning
Existential
Thinking
Technology
Invent
Create
Weapon
Enemy
Propaganda
Actually
Image
Comes
Weapons
Ballistic
Death
Kill
Precedes
Others
Battle
Missiles

More quotes by Sam Keen

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Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.
Sam Keen
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A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.
Sam Keen
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Mounting an expedition to actualize a Compassionate Commonwealth of all peoples...is the great spiritual challenge of our time.
Sam Keen
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Human beings are what I think of as biomythic animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order.
Sam Keen
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Throughout my life, I've had different metaphors for freedom. At one time, it was skin diving. In the ocean you feel weightless you escape from gravity.
Sam Keen
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Paranoia reduces anxiety and guilt by transferring to the other all the characteristics one does not want to recognize in oneself. It is maintained by selective perception and recall. We only see and acknowledge those negative aspects of the enemy that support the stereotype we have already created.
Sam Keen
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When you genuinely lose your illusions, you begin to marvel at things, because you don't have the answers any more.
Sam Keen
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I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.
Sam Keen
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Freud articulated the standard opinion when he asked with supposed seriousness, 'What does a woman want?'... Today the question that is the yeast in the social dough is, 'What do men want?
Sam Keen
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If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.
Sam Keen
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Enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition.
Sam Keen
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I think we have to trust ourselves in the darkness of not knowing. The God out of which we came and into which we go is an unknown God. It's the luminosity of that darkness and that unknowing that is, I think, the most human - and the most sacred - place of all.
Sam Keen
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There has always been a part of me that saw wilderness and risk-taking as the path to freedom.
Sam Keen
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The telling of your stories is a revolutionary act.
Sam Keen
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Mystical experiences (unlike scientific conclusions) cannot be communicated from one person to another. Philosophers and little children are continually amazed that we, unaccountably, find ourselves in a somewhat intelligible world.
Sam Keen
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What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.
Sam Keen
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The abyss beyond our beliefs is something we have to pass through in order to see the world anew, to see it in terms not dictated so much by our culture, our parents, or our religious convictions.
Sam Keen
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To really love a person completely is to come to a point where your stories are intertwined.
Sam Keen
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There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble.
Sam Keen
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I've spent my life cultivating knowledge of myself. But the more I know myself, the more utterly mysterious I become.
Sam Keen