Chester Elijah Branch Quotes

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

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.

~ Chester Elijah Branch

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

people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative.

~ Chester Elijah Branch