Words&Dirt

“The integrative nature of the moral experience means that a socially responsive ‘sense of shame’ (chi) is of high value in Confucian culture.  As we have seen, shame is such a powerful expression of moral awareness that, when properly nurtured, can become a pervasive value that enables the community to be both inclusive and self-regulating (Analects 2.3).  Shamelessness on the other hand is poison in the well, unleashing aberrant individuals to roam freely and to act arbitrarily without reference to the roles and relations that would properly locate them within their families and community.  Such selfish individuals diminish in a dramatic way the communal solidarity on which to consummate life depends.”

––Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, by Roger T. Ames, pg. 172

“It’s a shame we die of love in time of war.  Do I love you?  I don’t love you if love lasts longer than the firing of a bullet into a spinal cord.  And I do love you if love is surrender to a lightening storm that strikes me all of a sudden.  Come over, that we may find the answer.  Come, and let’s ask the question.  Nothing is left for those under siege in the last corner of the world but to let loose the genie of lust from the prison of words and gold.  It is utterly unfair for us to part without having connected.  And it is unfair to bring the look from halfway down the road back to an eye that pours honey over the fire.  Your eyes can wound a stone, and in my blood they spread the sensation of ants crawling.  When, then, am I going to gather these ants and return them to you, the house of ants, that I may stop scratching my blood with the sight of one leg on top of another.”

––Memory for Forgetfulness, by Mahmoud Darwish, pg. 128