28 June 2010
Welcome to the Survival Tales website.
If this is your first visit, see our About page for an introduction.
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“How many Black men had been crippled by the American oppression and had lost the women they loved and who loved them, because they hadn’t the strength to fight? How often had the women submitted to loveless arrangements for the sake of bare survival?”
- Maya Angelou, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas
1 June 2010
“ ‘What I find hard to understand, Vera, is – why were people so quick to betray each other? You would have thought they would show solidarity in the face of oppression.’
‘No no, that is the naive view, Nadezhda. You see, this is the dark underside of human nature. When someone has power, the lesser people always try to gain favour with them. [...] Look at the way your Labour politicians are creeping up to offer their homage’ (she pronounces it hom-aahj) ‘to the capitalists’ (she pronounces it cap-it-alists) ‘whom they vowed to overthrow. Of course it’s not just politicians, it happens throughout the animal kingdom too.’
(Oh, Big Sis, what a nose you have for sniffing out the tainted, the soiled, the venal, the compromised. When did you learn to see so darkly?)
‘They’re not my Labour politicians, Vera.’
‘Well they are certainly not mine. Nor Mother’s, as you know.’
Yes, my generousdumpling-hearted stuff-’em-with-food-till-they-burst mother was a devoted supporter of Mrs Thatcher.
‘Let’s not talk about politics Vera. We always seem to fall out.’
‘Of course some things are so distasteful they are better not talked about.’”
- Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian
3 May 2010
“How is it that we have created so much mental and emotional suffering despite levels of wealth and comfort unprecedented in human history? Often what we feel is missing is little more than time enjoying the company of friends, yet even that can seem beyond us. We talk as if our lives were a constant battle for psychological survival, struggling against stress and emotional exhaustion, but the truth is that the luxury and extravagance of our lives is so great that it threatens the planet.”
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level
28 April 2010
“Life in this world,’ he said, ‘is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we, as troglodyte seekers of wisdom, can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, “Go on, do Deformed Rabbit, it’s my favourite.”
- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
21 April 2010
“Ill-mannered people are generally so because they falsely estimate their own worth, and think that a waiter … or a bus driver … is to be valued by his occupation – or more accurately, by his income, which in these cases could be assumed to be modest – rather than his humanity. There begins impertinence: make a person a label, or a sum of money, and he becomes not an end in himself, but an instrument; and to treat anyone as such is, as Kant argued, not just the supreme discourtesy but the supreme wrong”
- A C Grayling on Civility, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life
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19 April 2010
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” – Seneca
Thank you for joining us at the beginning of our humble voyage. We are two people who have created a performance event, an event which we hope will be a contribution to the discussions about what it means to “survive” in our society.
This site holds information about performances, and over time we’ll be adding other information – signposts, clues, myths and questions – which have inspired us or got us thinking.
But in the meantime, please make your next step a visit to our About page.
