Cooperation is humanity’s superpower, and the way we have enlarged our circle — from kin, to tribes, to religions, to countries, to the world — is miraculous. But the conditions under which that cooperation have taken hold are delicate, and like everything else, part of the biophysical system in which we live. We are changing that system in ways we do not understand and with consequences we cannot predict.
— Ezra Klein, Texas Is a Rich State in a Rich Country, and Look What Happened
Behind every scientific advance there is always a matrix, a mother load of unknowns out of which the new partial answers have been chiseled. But the hungry, overpopulated, sick, ambitious, and competitive world will not wait, we are told, till more is known, but must rush in where angels fear to tread.
—Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels Fear - Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred
Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
— Willam Martin
“Absence of emotions neither causes nor promotes rationality. […] In order to respond reasonably one must first of all be ‘moved,’ and the opposite of emotional is not ‘rational,’ whatever that may mean…”
— Arendt, ‘On Violence’, in Crises of the Republic
Everyday speech is “instrumental” rather than “expressive”, intended to achieve a goal rather than simply to tell one’s own truth. When we speak instrumentally, we try to influence the listener by informing or affirming or rebuking or making common cause. But when we speak expressively, we speak to express the truth within us, honoring the inner teacher by letting it know that we are attending to its voice.
— Parker J. Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness)