“We are living in a world which seems to be founded on the refusal to reflect.”

Darkness, p. 91
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: People have asked me why — if meditation is so great and gives you so much bliss — are my films so dark, and there's so much violence?
There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world right now, and most films reflect the world in which we live. They're stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They're going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.
I fall in love with certain ideas. And I am where I am. Now, if I told you I was enlightened, and this is enlightened filmmaking, that would be another story. But I'm just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.
We all reflect the world we live in. Even if you make a period film, it will reflect your times. You can see the way period films differ, depending on when they were made. It's a sensibility — how they talk, certain themes — and those things change as the world changes.
And so, even though I'm from Missoula, Montana, which is not the surrealistic capital of the world, you could be anywhere and see a kind of strangeness in how the world is these days, or have a certain way of looking at things.

Darkness, p. 91
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: People have asked me why — if meditation is so great and gives you so much bliss — are my films so dark, and there's so much violence?
There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world right now, and most films reflect the world in which we live. They're stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They're going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.
I fall in love with certain ideas. And I am where I am. Now, if I told you I was enlightened, and this is enlightened filmmaking, that would be another story. But I'm just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.
We all reflect the world we live in. Even if you make a period film, it will reflect your times. You can see the way period films differ, depending on when they were made. It's a sensibility — how they talk, certain themes — and those things change as the world changes.
And so, even though I'm from Missoula, Montana, which is not the surrealistic capital of the world, you could be anywhere and see a kind of strangeness in how the world is these days, or have a certain way of looking at things.

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John (1911)
Novels published under the pseudonym Edith van Dyne
Context: I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and — and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another — a sequel — feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?

“Variations on a Philosopher” in Themes and Variations (1943), p. 2

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

Charles Horton Cooley, in Structure and Agency in Everyday Life: An Introduction to Social Psychology http://books.google.co.in/books?id=KMLEnR1hoDQC&pg=PA53, (1 January 2003), p. 53