Word: helplessly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cioran believes that Western civilization is today at a stage of helpless paralysis. Modern man, he writes, is aware that every action eventually negates itself, every profound idea will give rise to another refuting it, and that every revolution leads to inevitable counterrevolution. Even nihilism and atheism are false options, since they too involve a commitment that will eventually crumble. "At our limits a God appears, or something that serves his turn," says Cioran, who is at once an unbeliever and a profoundly religious man. "I fall back on God, if only out of a desire to trample my doubts...
...turns the Congo's victims into plastic participants in a war that is not quite real. The commander (Rod Taylor) and the sergeant (Jim Brown) are at the head of a small band of mercenaries and Congolese troops. Their assignment is to rescue an outpost of helpless whites. Even before the battle begins, however, Brown is forced to restrain Taylor from murdering a murder-bent former Nazi officer. The prize of the battle, once it is joined, is blonde Yvette Mimieux, a sympathetic siren who turns Taylor on by a combination of concupiscence and conscience...
...East Germany as the acid test for any future dialogue between the Soviet Union and Bonn. Intimating that Bonn's three Western allies lack both effective means and the political will to enforce civilian access to Berlin, he warned that the West Germans would be rendered isolated and helpless unless Bonn recognizes East Germany...
...wrong building in the wrong place at the wrong time." wailed the chairman of New York City's planning commission, Donald H. Elliott, who is helpless to do anything about it since the project conforms with zoning requirements. Urbanologists pointed out that the new building would press an estimated 12,000 new office workers into the already overpressed Grand Central area. But New Yorkers' basic objections were esthetic, though few people exactly articulated this, or could have if they tried. A certain esthetic pleasure used to come from the sight of the Grand Central complex-from the north...
Triple Ones. The main character-in fact the only major character-is a rootless, helpless, 56-year-old accountant named J. Henry Waugh. Alone in his apartment, he spends all his nights and weekends playing an intricate baseball game of his own invention. Eight imaginary teams of the Universal Baseball Association battle for the pennant; individual players spring to life as three dice and a collection of elaborately detailed charts decide their fate. They reach glory, enjoy fame, grow old, lose their skills, retire to sell insurance and finally die as the dice decree. Waugh records the statistics...