Prefatory quote ideas: Difference between revisions

 

    Unix "Rule of Diversity", in e.g. '''E.S. Raymond''', The Art of Unix Programming, 2003. 

 

"''Liminality ''(from the Latin word for threshold) is a term..for a variety of ''states of passage, ''through which designated members of a given culture travel at specified times...Because they occupy no fixed status in the liminal state, they are considered ambiguous beings--even dangerous--and their presence is subject to ritual regulation. Special precautions are taken to separate them from ordinary social life...[Liminal states] share a suspension of the commonplace; intermingling with unfamiliar others in strange settings; and a heightened sense of uncertainty, of things being unfinished and in process.  Although liminal passages are usually undertaken in well-mapped territory from which the voyager is expected to return, ''occasionally the process stalls....We will argue that what unites the phenomena gathered up in the term homelessness is liminality (resolved or stalled) and abeyance gone awry." ''