From Karl Barth:
Deep down there is a part of us that is a functional atheist.” RefMgr field[18]: The Divine Reboot
From Richard Swenson:
Whenever progress is most active, profusion is most active…progress always gives us more and more of everything faster and faster.
From Paul Rosch, M.D., Stress Reduction Effects of Social Support":
Two thirds of all people who struggle with stress cite loneliness as their major problem, even though hundreds of people surround them each day. [Paul D. Rosch, M.D., “The Health Benefits of Friendship.” found in “Stress Reduction Effects of Social Support” informational packet (American Institute of Stress).
11
From Martin Luther:
The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure or limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name; others for the sake of mere gain.
From Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety (December 14, 2000) at page 32-35:
Information Anxiety is produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. It is the black hole between data and knowledge, and it happens when information doesn’t tell us what we want or need to know. [We are] inundated with facts but starved for understanding. A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.” (32) “More new information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000. About 1,000 books are published internationally every day, and the total of all printed knowledge doubles every eight years.” (35)
1997
From Larry D. Rosen, PhD, Techno Stress: Coping with Technology @ Work @ Home @ Play (September 1997):
Recent studies suggest that the amount of information on the Internet doubles every three months. The dream of 24/7 technology has become a nightmare. We’re drowning in data. And it’s making us ill, literally.
1999
From Robert, Swenson, Hurtling Toward Oblivion", 1999, at pp 31-32:
No matter where we look – it makes no difference – there is always more. No matter what topic we consider – there is always more. Obviously there are more people – lots of people. There are more cars traveling more miles over more roads, and more airplanes carrying more passengers on more flights…There are more computers, more books, and more magazines, all processing and distributing more information – lots more information. There are more businesses offering more services and making more products – lots more products. There are more buildings, more restaurants, more medications, more telephones, and more money. Lots more money. There are more activities and commitments, more choices and decisions, more change and stress, more technology and complexity. There is, in short, more…of everything. Wherever we look, we are surrounded by more. Always. In 1969, Robert Vacca said, “Everything is on the increase, and every year the speed of that increase is greater.” In 1800 there were one billion people; in 1930 two billion; 1960 three billion; 1975 four billion; 1987 five billion; and 1998, six billion. Life expectancy worldwide was twenty-one years at the time of Christ, forty-eight years in 1965, and sixty five years in 1995. This is expected to rise to eighty-five years by 2050. There are sixty-two thousand new book titles and new editions each year. The Physicians Desk Reference had three hundred pages when it first came out in 1948; fifty years later it has three thousand pages. In 1978, the average grocery store had eleven thousand products; now it has over thirty thousand products. There are 550 different kinds of coffee, 250 different kinds of toothpaste, and 175 different kinds of salad dressing. There are 2,500 different types of light bulbs in one store alone.
2002
From Harold Masback, For Nothing is Impossible with God" (December 22, 2002) at pages 13-14:
Noel was 9 years old and living in a series of New Haven foster homes. His mother was in prison for dealing drugs; his father had long since abandoned the family and would soon be murdered. As his mother came down with AIDS, Noel shuffled from dysfunctional home to dysfunctional home, alternatively threatened and recruited by neighborhood gangs. Had Gabriel told Noel then that he would be going to college and reunited with his mother, he would surely have asked, “How can this be?” But nothing is impossible with God. A group of us felt called by God to adopt Noel’s entire 4th grade and promise these “dreamers”
8 years of tutoring, mentoring, field trips and summer camp. And oh yes, any dreamer who stayed in the program would get a free college education.
47 of Noel’s 56 dreamer classmates graduate from high school this spring, six more graduate next spring.
40 will be going to college or vocational school next fall. And oh yes, Noel says God inspired him to work hard in school so his mom would be proud of him. Noel will be turning down several other college offers this spring to accept his admission to Southern Connecticut State University in Hamden. He wants to go to college close to home so he can care for his sick mom.
2002
From Harold Masback, Anger's Burden" (September 22, 2002) at page 3:
And then, left to its own dynamics, anger passes as quickly and efficiently as it comes. As with the match stick, the fuel is quickly exhausted, the flame goes out and the body returns to normal. Back on the farm, our two cats Bouncer and Georgia would suddenly erupt into ferocious, caterwauling scraps over the water bowl, but five minutes later they would be curled up next to each other by the fire. Whatever else was going on in their little feline brains, I’m pretty sure neither one was smoldering with resentment or plotting revenge.
From Harold Masback, Priming the Pump" (May 5, 2002) at pages 4-5:
One of the great bucolic charms of our Maryland farm was the well water. No more city chemicals, we had our own fresh, cold well water. But as we learned quickly enough, there is a catch to every bucolic charm, and the catch to well water was the electric pump. Now the pump was pretty reliable as farm house pumps go: that is, you could rely on it as long as there was never a drought, or you never had any guests, or you never wanted to take a shower and run the washing machine at the same time. But if any of these things happened singly, much less in combination, we’d run the well dry and the pump would lose its prime.