tradition

The past informs the present.

You gotta look backwards to go forwards.

I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.

A purpose derived from a false premise _ that a deity has ordained submission to his will _ cannot merit respect. The pursuit of Enlightenment-era goals _ solving our world__ problems through rational discourse, rather than through religion and tradition _ provides ample grounds for a purposive existence. It is not for nothing that the Enlightenment, when atheism truly began to take hold, was also known as the Age of Reason.

MURRY: Why do we even celebrate the New Year? It's just this arbitrary quirk of how we measure time in years, right? Midnight tonight is the very same transition from day to day that we do every 24 hours. But this thing in my hands, it feels real in a way the numbered calendar box never does. Why? What makes midnight tonight any different?

MURRY: It's not that, it's just_ I don't really get it. I usually find myself staring at the midnight deadline filled with regrets both for opportunities and loved ones missed. It's another day closer to the end. The last thing I feel like doing is counting down to some wild celebration. It just seems so sad to say goodbye to a year and know that it__ gone forever and you can__ go back to it. Not to relive, not to correct.NOEL: I've never thought about it that way.MURRY: There's something so final about it. It's the period at the end of the sentence.NOEL: The New Year's resolution.

NOEL: And even when I don't stay up until midnight, I still enjoy the tradition of New Year's resolutions. What can I say? I like setting personal goals and challenging myself to improve. I suppose I could do it on any day of the year, but the New Year is as good a day as any. It's a fresh start.

MURRY: Resolutions are a complete waste of time. They're just this meaningless ritual, empty promises we make and break within hours of each other.

MOTHER TIME: Every New Year is the same. Every day, every second is too for that matter. But when we deliver them in secret, when another year just begins as a matter of fact, it's easy to fail to appreciate what a miracle it is to have more time. So, I suppose, it feels different right now because this time you're paying attention

MOTHER TIME: We all get the exact same 365 days. The only difference is what we do with them.

No business can continue to shrink. That can only go on for so long before irrelevancy sets in.

Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history.

Here and throughout the Gospels, Jesus does not simply cite Scripture as though it were a self-evident, self-interpreting source of authority. He rereads it, drawing out new, often highly provocative meanings, "fulfilling" it in a way that gives it new form for a new day. What would Jesus do? Reread. The Bible tells me so.

MOTHER TIME: Life goes by so very fast, my dears, and taking the time to reflect, even once a year, slows things down. We zoom past so many seconds, minutes, hours, killing them with the frantic way we live that it's important we take at least this one collective sigh and stop, take stock, and acknowledge our place in time before diving back into the melee. Midnight on New Year's Eve is a unique kind of magic where, just for a moment, the past and the future exist at once in the present. Whether we're aware of it or not, as we countdown together to it, we're sharing the burden of our history and committing to the promise of tomorrow.

If you can't set a better example for progress, don't show disapproval against the worse tradition!

Don__ try to prove to everybody that the reason why you can__ is that nobody could. It__ no excuse. You can break the tradition by being the first person to make it happen!

What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.

It preoccupies me until it's time to leave. It seems such the right expression of grief. I am sad, so in whatever small way I can, I will tear myself apart. They've taken what's on the inside and made it visible. If I thought it wouldn't be inappropriate I'd do it myself.