Unde Malum

TRANSFORMATION: Swedenborg sees the whole purpose of human life as "regeneration," and sees clearly the need for dark passages. "Before anything is brought back into order, it is quite normal for it to be brought first into a kind of confusion, a virtual chaos. In this way, things that fit together badly are severed from each other and when they have been severed, then the Lord arranges them in order."
     Lastly, I would stress Swedenborg's insistence that we will ultimately believe what we want to believe. "We all label as 'good' whatever we feel as pleasant . . . and we label 'true' whatever we therefore perceive as delightful...." In his view, no amount of 'factuality" will convince us unless we want the 'distinguishable oneness" that he sees as our highest good.
— George F. Dole, in a response to John L. Hitchcock's paper "The New Physics and Human Transformation," in Chrysalis, Volume IV, Issue I, "Science and Spirituality, p. 41.

     But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure.
— Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, p. 10.

"There are two kinds of crazy people," Dr. Goldman said. He said this privately, to close friends, and with no intention of being quoted. "There are those whose primative instincts, sexual and aggressive, have been misdirected, blunted, confused or shattered at an early age by environmental and/or biological factors beyond their control. Not many of these people can completely and permanently regain that balance we call 'sanity,' but they can be made to confront the source of their damage, to compensate for it, to reduce their disadvantageous substitutions and to adjust to the degree that they can meet most social requirements without painful difficulty. My satisfaction in life is in assisting these people in their adjustments.
     "But there are other people, people who choose to be crazy in order to cope with what they regard as a crazy world. They have adopted craziness as a lifestyle. I've found that there is nothing I can do for these people because the only way you can get them to give up their craziness is to convince them that the world is actually sane. I must confess that I have found such a conviction almost impossible to support."
— Tom Robbins, Ibid., p. 172.

"Exactly," answered Sissy. "Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.' 'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth. Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all. True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. As a psychiatrist, wouldn't you say that a stable individual accepts the inevitability of his death? Likewise, a stable culture, government or institution has built into it its own demise. It is open to change, open even to being overthrown. It is open period. Gracefully open. That's stability. That's alive."
— Tom Robbins, Ibid., pp. 208-209.

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry. To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic. To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace. As its options (no matter how absurd or unlikely) diminish, so do its chances for the future.
— Tom Robbins, Ibid., p. 295.