Sean's Tumblelog

“ A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

— William James

“ Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we can’t eat money.

— Cree Proverb

Alice discovers The Matrix

via: mudwerks: & suyhnc: & uessai:

“ The old idea of a powerful philosopher-king who would put into practice some carefully thought out plans was a fairy-tale invented in the interest of a land-owning aristocracy. The democratic equivalent of this fairy-tale is the superstition that enough people of good will may be persuaded by rational argument to take planned action. History shows that the social reality is quite different. The course of historical development is never shaped by theoretical constructions, however excellent… Under no circumstances could the outcome of rational planning become a stable structure; for the balance of forces is bound to change. All social engineering, no matter how much it prides itself on its realism and on its scientific character, is doomed to remain a Utopian dream.

— Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (Routledge, 1969), p. 47. via The Siren’s Song.

“ Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

— Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy quotes

» The Land Institute - Toward An Ignorance-Based World View (LR81)

To call the unknown “random” is to plant the flag by which to colonize and exploit the known.

To call the unknown by its right name, “mystery,” is to suggest that we had better respect the possibility of a larger, unseen pattern that can be damaged or destroyed and, with it, the smaller patterns.

“ It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

— Upton Sinclair - Wikiquote

Lost by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

The Life and Times of Uncle D (via Jenaiamaui)

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“ Akrasia - The condition in which while knowing what it would be best to do, one does something else.

— Akrasia: Definition from Answers.com