iosephvs bibliothecarivs > Recent Status Updates

Are any of my friends on Litsy.com or LibraryThing.com? You can find me @bibliothecarivs.

In response to the 'repressed memories' psychology fad and false child abuse accusations of the 1980s-90s (which affected my family):

'Mental health professionals need to think more like scientists and less like advocates; they must weigh all the evidence fairly and consider the possibility that their suspicions are unfounded. If they do not, it will not be justice that is served, but self-justification.'

"Many of the problems of the modern soul can successfully be addressed by solutions put forward by religions, once these solutions have been dislodged from the supernatural structure within which they were first conceived. The wisdom of the faiths belongs to all mankind, even the most rational among us...."

"[Auguste] Comte recognized, as many of his contemporaries did not, that a secular society devoted solely to the accumulation of wealth, scientific discovery, popular entertainment and romantic love - a society lacking in any sources of ethical instruction, consolation, transcendent awe or solidarity - would fall prey to untenable social maladies."

"Those of us who hold no religious or supernatural beliefs still require regular, ritualized encounters with concepts such as friendship, community, gratitude and transcendence."

"We should revive and continue the underlying aims of religious architecture, by expressing these through secular temples designed to promote important emotions and abstract themes.... They would all be connected through the ancient aspiration of sacred architecture: to place us for a time in a thoughtfully structured three-dimensional space, in order to educate and rebalance our souls."

"There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it."

"Science should matter to us not only because it helps us to control parts of the world, but also because it shows us things that we will never master. Thus we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion kilometres which comprise a single light year, or perhaps on the luminosity of the largest known star in our galaxy, Eta Carinae... 4m times as bright [as the sun]."

"It was dark when I was going home. The owner was sweeping up. He was Italian. He said: Ees quiet now. Not so much people around now."

"There was a snowdrop on the ditch. I said to da about the snowdrop and the children playing in the lane: They do make a difference these beautiful things da. It is good having them. I stared at the snowdrop for hours and listened to the radio."

"I went into Mickey Traynor's shop. There was a big picture of Our Lord hanging on the wall. It said: Buy a television or else you bastard! No it didn't it said Our Saviour looks after us all."