JDaphorism-June06

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JD Quotations, aphorisms thoughts & observations

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June 2006

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. Horace
Mann educational reformer (1796-1859)

All of today's various doomsday scenarios - whether it's the millennium bug, oil depletion, global warming, avian flu or the destruction of biodiversity -emphasize human culpability. Their premise is that the human species is essentially destructive and morally bankrupt. 'With breathtaking insolence', warns Lovelock in his book The Revenge of Gaia, 'humans have taken the stores of carbon that Gaia buried to keep oxygen at its proper level and burnt them'.

.....from Frank Furedi's Confronting the New Misanthropy...

Western culture's estrangement from its humanity

The rising popularity of a term like 'ecological footprint' shows how much resonance the association of normal human activity with destruction has today. This term, which implies that having an impact on the environment is necessarily a bad thing, is rarely criticised for its misanthropic assumptions. On TV and in film and popular culture, the development of civilisation, and particularly the advance of science and technology, is depicted as the source of environmental destruction and social disintegration. The idea that civilisation is responsible for the perils we face today depicts the human species as the problem, rather than as the maker of solutions. And the most striking manifestation of this anti-humanism is the belief that, if the Earth is to survive, there will have to be a significant reduction in the number of human beings.

This must be true of virtually every man alive: the fewer the distractions in one's life, the greater the urge for creative expression. Those distractions must also lead to the never-ending angst of the 'modern' man, afflicted as he is with the variegated addictions of the 'modern' world. That primeval urge to create lies hidden, crying to get out. The irony is that those distractions are themselves the product of creative minds in overdrive, making hay of the angst that gnaws away slowly but surely. It's not surprising that we often yearn for the charms of classical learning to rescue us from this modern misery. On the one hand we can't do without modern comforts and conveniences--our so-called lifestyle; on the other hand, we feel suffocated and wish we were somehow destitute; feeling saturated by too many 'things'

on an aspect of human evolution:

Nostalgia and sentiment are what make us human. And as recognizable humans, we're hardly going to evolve to a radically different form any time soon (unless we tamper with the machinery of evolution to effect some kind of indestructible BIONIC man). So why fight what we know makes us human? The truth is, though, we're already beginning to mould ourselves in the image of such a bionic species, which need not be concerned with feelings, emotions, sentiment, disease or death. The idea is to be organically, and not just spiritually, immortal. Will all mankind reconcile itself to this brand of bionic immortality? Evolution requires eons of patience. Are we in such a hurry that this process be speeded up? The cure or remedy may be worse than the inconvenience of mortality.
JD

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and
that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. Ogden Nash
author (1902-1971)

in keeping with the above:

Conscious is being aware of something; conscience is wishing you weren't.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to
write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel
Johnson lexicographer (1709-1784)

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to
an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous
nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the
evil they refrain from.
Honore De Balzac
novelist (1799-1850)

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.
Milan Kundera

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
Nelson Mandela

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
Mark Twain
author & humorist (1835-1910)

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know
peace.
Jimi Hendrix
musician, singer & songwriter (1942-1970)

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness: it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W.H. Auden