If there is one thing we can ...

If there is one thing we can draw from where we are now and where we were then, it is that the unimaginable is ordinary, that the way forward is almost never a straight line you can glance down but a convoluted path of surprises, gifts, and afflictions you prepare for by accepting your blind spots as well as your intuitions.

Change is rarely straightforward, and that is one of the central premises of this book. Sometimes it’s as complex as chaos theory and as slow as evolution.

Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that yes, we can change the world because we have many times before. You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant of our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.

You can tell of King’s civil ...

You can tell of King’s civil disobedience tactics being inspired by Gandhi’s tactics, and Gandhi’s inspired by Tolstoy and the radical acts of noncooperation and sabotage of British women suffragists. - P126

Mushroomed: after a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. - P126

One came from the recognition of how powerful are the altruistic, idealistic forces already at work in the world. - P142

The second reinforcement came out of my investigation of how human beings respond to major urban disasters, from the devastating earthquakes in San Francisco (in 1906) and Mexico City (in 1985) to the Blitz in London to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The assumption behind much disaster response by the authorities—and the logic of bombing civilians—is that civilization is a brittle façade, and behind it lies our true nature as monstrous, selfish, chaotic, and violent or as timid, fragile, and helpless. In fact, in most disasters most people are calm, resourceful, altruistic, and creative. And civilian bombing campaigns generally fail to break the will of the people, making them a waste as well as a crime against humanity. - P159

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced," said James Baldwin.

"Memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair," the theologian Walter Brueggeman noted. - P1

It’s an extraordinary statement, one that reminds us that though hope is about the future, grounds for hope lie in the records and recollections of the past.

A memory commensurate to the complexity of the past and the whole cast of participants, a memory that includes our power, produces that forward-directed energy called hope. - P184

Amnesia leads to despair in many ways.

One of the essential aspects of depression is the sense that you will always be mired in this misery, that nothing can or will change.

The other affliction amnesia brings is a lack of examples of positive change, of popular power, evidence that we can do it and have done it. George Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

그러므로 시간 속의 인간들에 관한 학문은 오직 하나만...

그러므로 시간 속의 인간들에 관한 학문은 오직 하나만 존재한다. 그것은 죽은 사람에 관한 연구와 살아 있는 사람에 관한 연구를 결합하도록 끊임없이 요구한다. 그것을 우리는 뭐라고 부를까? 나는 왜 역사라는 고대적인 명칭이 가장 적합한지 이미 설명한 바 있다. 이 명칭은 다른 어떤 것보다 덜 배타적이고, 몇백 년 이상에 걸친 노력을 감동적으로 가장 잘 담고 있는, 따라서 가장 좋은 이름이다. 그리고 내가 이처럼 역사를 현재의 인식에까지 확장할 것을 제안하는 이유는 자신의 어떤직업적 요구를 충족시키려 해서가 아니다. 인생은 너무나 짧고 지식은 너무나 광대하여 아무리 뛰어난 천재라도 인류의 총체적인 경험을 홀로 획득할 수는 없다. 어떤 사람들은 여전히 현재의 사실만 연구할 것이며, 또 어떤 사람들은 석기시대 또는 이집트시대만 연구할 것이다.
우리는 그들에게 단지 역사 연구는 자급자족을 허락하지 않는다는 사실을 상기시키고 싶을 뿐이다. 그들 가운데 어느 누구도 홀로 떨어져서는 자신의 전문 분야에서조차도 완전한 지식을 가질 수 없다. 또한 유일한 참된 역사는 상호협력에 의해서만 이루어질 수 있는 ‘보편적인 역사‘(histoire universelle)이다. - P79

Hope locates itself in the pr...

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.

Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. - P110

[오늘의 한문장] 인류의 진화

다윈은 다른 동물과 차별화되는 인류의 특징을 큰 머리, 두 발 걷기, 도구 쓰기, 작은 치아로 보았습니다. 이 네 가지 특징은 서로 어우러져서 밀접한 연관 관계를 맺습니다 - <인류의 진화>, 이상희 - 밀리의 서재
https://www.millie.co.kr/v3/bookDetail/ec472d1ab124407f - P44