Disasters

"There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster."

"CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others."

"Market signals were clear: There's no profit in preventing a future catastrophe."

"The formula for achieving a successful relationship: You should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster."

"The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours ; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs."

"Disaster is a natural part of my evolution, toward tragedy and dissolution."

"Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster."

"Barn’s burnt down Now I can see the moon"

"A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language ... not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions."

"I had not been long back from Hiroshima when I heard someone say, in Szilárd's presence; that it was the tragedy of scientists that their discoveries were used for destruction. Szilárd replied, as he more than anyone else had the right to reply; that it was not the tragedy of scientists, it is the tragedy of mankind."

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

"I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict. Both sides/ideas are right."

"I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person... but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict. Both sides/ideas are right. Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish."

"Comedy is tragedy plus time."

"Comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning."

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

"The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world."

"These struggles have got to result in happy endings for all, and the readers must learn not to worship tragedy as the highest art any more."

"The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism."

"Gorgias called tragedy a deception wherein he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived."

"Tragedy springs from outrage; it protests at the conditions of life. It carries in it the possibilities of disorder, for all tragic poets have something of the rebelliousness of Antigone. Goethe, on the contrary, loathed disorder. He once said that he preferred injustice, signifying by that cruel assertion not his support for reactionary political ideals, but his conviction that injustice is temporary and reparable whereas disorder destroys the very possibilities of human progress. Again, this is an anti-tragic view; in tragedy it is the individual instance of injustice that infirms the general pretence of order. One Hamlet is enough to convict a state of rottenness."

"A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary."

"The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel."

"In this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy — or tragedy above us."

"I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society. Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly."

"The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens — and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies."

"Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect. No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination."

"There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal. For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity."

"The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force. Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief — optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man. It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time — the heart and spirit of the average man."

"The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believes that advances in science and technology should make life on earth better, not worse. We equip the public, policy makers, and scientists with the information needed to demand, recognize, and support public policies that reduce manmade existential threats such as nuclear war, climate change, and disruptive technologies. Our award-winning journal, iconic Doomsday Clock, open-access website, and timely events promote evidence-based policy debates essential to healthy democracies and a safe and livable planet."

"They started by referencing the Doomsday Clock (Science and Security Board Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), which has pegged humanity’s risk of annihilation at an all-time high of only 100 seconds to midnight. Chomsky feels we’re actually closer to midnight than that. For example, his opinion is influenced by information in a leaked draft of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) upcoming report..."

"With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation."

"According to Chomsky, the Doomsday Clock setting at 100 seconds to midnight is based upon: (1) global warming (2) nuclear war and (3) disinformation, or the collapse of any kind of rational discourse. As such, number three makes it impossible to deal with the first two major problems. Along those lines, within the Republican Party there’s virtually a disappearance of any pretense of rational discourse. Twenty-five (25%) percent of Republicans believe the government is run by an elite satanic group of pedophiles. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans believe that the election was stolen. Only fifteen percent (15%) of Republicans believe that global warming is a serious problem. Therein lies an insurmountable problem to solving the main issues that continually tick the clock ever closer to a disaster scenario that will likely be unprecedented in the annals of warfare and environmental degradation. As a result, Chomsky says: “We’re living in a world of total illusion and fantasy.... Unless this is dealt with soon, it’ll be impossible to deal with the two major issues within the time span that we have available, which is not very long.”"

"In January 2018, the experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight, where it had stood during the darkest days of the Cold War, from 1953 to 1960."

"The latest move of the hands was precipitated by the recklessness in Trump’s nuclear thinking and the deepening crisis over Korea. Trump wondered aloud about the point of having nuclear weapons if he couldn’t use them. His answer was to make them more usable, which he did with his new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the first since Obama’s 2010 NPR, which had reduced the role of nuclear weapons in the US defense posture. The 2018 NPR significantly elevated their role, permitting use in response to vaguely defined “extreme circumstances,” such as cyberattacks or attacks on the infrastructure of both the United States and its “allies and partners.” The review doubled down on Obama’s unconscionable 30-year trillion-dollar modernization of all parts of the nuclear arsenal. The actual cost looks to be closer to $1.7 trillion and climbing. To make matters worse, all eight other nuclear powers are undertaking their own modernizations, though on a far more modest scale. Russia, it should be noted, actually cut its defense spending this past year."

"How late is it now? On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce the time on its Doomsday Clock. Last year, the bulletin moved the hands forwards 30 seconds, to reach two minutes to midnight: the closest to catastrophe in six and a half decades. Since then, the immediate peril encapsulated in Donald Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” to North Korea has receded. But Mr Trump should take no credit for pressing pause on a crisis largely of his own making. His actions have exacerbated existing problems... As a candidate, Mr Trump is said to have asked why the US could not use nuclear weapons. So it should be no surprise he has proved reckless in office. Last week, his administration announced it would begin its pull-out from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty next month, and Mr Trump called for billions of dollars of new spending on missile defences. Arms control experts have warned that the missile defence review, and Mr Trump’s rhetoric in particular, risk provoking an arms race, encouraging Russia and China, both of which are potential and actual destabilisers already, to increase their own capabilities."

"Atomic scientists say the world is closer to complete destruction than at any time since the Cold War. The reasons include a renewed nuclear arms race, man-made climate change and state-supported disinformation campaigns. The scientists released the 2019 Doomsday Clock statement this week. They set the clock at two minutes to midnight – the same time as in 2018. They call the current international situation a “new abnormal.”"

"The scientists argued that threats to humanity – nuclear and climate change – worsened with disinformation from political leaders around the world. They said nationalist leaders and their supporters lied in many ways, but especially on social media. The leaders did not care they were lying, said the scientists, but insisted “that their lies were truth, and the truth ‘fake news.’”"

"To turn back the clock, the group called for several actions to make the world safer. Those include extending nuclear arms talks between the U.S. and Russia, adopting measures to prevent military events along the borders of NATO, demanding action to deal with climate change and discouraging the use of disinformation to decrease public trust."

"The great flowing stream of all rivers, Indra, you brought to rest by prayer the flood and made the rivers easy to cross for Turviti and Vaya (IV. 19.6)."

"The river Vibalyam, extending over the Earth, Indra, you stopped by your magic wisdom power (IV.30.12)."

"I was the Father of the human race and the Sun. I am the seer Kakshivan. I humbled the sage Kutsa. I am the seer Ushanas, behold me. I gave the Earth to the Aryans, the rain to my mortal worshipper. I led the roaring floods. The Gods moved according to my direction (IV.26.1-2)."

"The great seer, bom of the Divine, directed by the Divine, wise in vision, stopped the flooding river, when Vishwamitra favored king Sudas (111.54.9)."

"The peoples direct their will in this work, fierce, powerful, contending with each other in the battle for the floods (IV.24.4)."

"As a bull I uphold seven rivers, wealth-flowing currents over the Earth. Of strong will I cross the floods, by war I made for man a way to goodness (X.49.9)"