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"There can be no freedom without freedom to
fail." Eric Hoffer
"The visceral experience of failure seems to have
been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students.
It
stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect
all of us don't seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how
badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions.
No doubt because those who sit on
the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the
consequences of the decisions they make." - Matthew B. Crawford
Fail is defined as:being
unsuccessful
proven insufficiency
judged unacceptable
fall
short of expectations
ceasing proper functioning
perform
ineffectively or inadequately
disappoint, prove
undependable, abandon or forsake
decline in strength resulting from
excessive strain; made otherwise useless
The ultimate taboo - failure! "The Rolling Stones had it right you can't always get what you
want.
Nevertheless, losing is a taboo in American society.
The ultimate put down is
"loser," and failure is the ultimate f-word.
Hundreds of
books have been written on how
to win; there are scarcely any on how to lose.
We forget that losers
changed the world.
Columbus missed his target by thousands of miles.
Thomas Edison had most of his inventing triumphs before
the age of 40, and in his later years he rolled up an ever increasing number of
failures.
Mozart died impoverished and was
buried in the pauper's section of the
cemetery.
Most of the first edition of "Walden" remained in
Henry David Thoreau's personal
library.
Winston Churchill
distracted himself from defeat with painting, writing, gardening and breeding
butterflies.
Winner worship is
embedded early.
Children returning from
games are asked whether they won or lost, when they should be asked whether
they had fun, or asked nothing at all.
Parents often play games with their
children and allow them to win, ill preparing them for the 'game' of life.
Some educators feel that flunking a class is so
detrimental to self-respect that they move children along to the next grade -
to bigger failures to come.
Nowhere is winner worship and loser
loathing more evident than in sports or in that other great arena: politics.
Few losers suffer more acutely than defeat candidates.
Jimmy
Carter was stunned by his land-slide 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan, and for about
five years he vanished from the national media.
He took no part in the
1984 presidential campaign - even though his
former vice president, Walter Mondale, was running against
Ronald Reagan.
Americans still revere the images of the
lone cowboy, riding off into the sunset in search of his
destiny.
But how
many of us are timid couch potatoes, spectators at the game of life, content to
see the spotlight on the winning team, to forget about the other side of every
zero sum transaction?
Americans need to
confront their losers and their losses.
Something as universal as
failure deserves our attention.
Losing can be positive and enabling if
it compels us to examine why we lost."
adapted from William
Ecenbarger |
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is presented for educational purposes only.

This website defines a
new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based
on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme
leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on coöperation. Coöperation
does not occur at the point of a gun.
American social mores and values
have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international
cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to
deceive the populace in general through corporate media by pressing emotional
buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior mass
media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the
family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the
corrupt international elites vision of a
perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of
the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the
corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which
further their purposes.
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