Thursday, August 13, 2009

Quote of the day





"We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat."

--Terence McKenna

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the earth is already figuratively in flames, would it make sufficient difference, literally, to rouse ourselves to cross that room in order to check the thermostat, when we who have thought about it most deeply already know we cannot turn the thermostat down in the time left?

It's not, as McKenna presumptively assumed, a matter of our being victims of abstraction at all--it is more realistically a bifurcation within the human population between those, on one side, who are either willfully delusional or actually ignorant of the implications and facts of imminent and irreversible global warming, peak oil, overpopulation, ecological destruction, waning resources, etc., and those, on the other side, who are not ignorant or abstracted at all, but realize simultaneously that, all things considered, it is quite likely far too late, given our lack of global consensus, will, human resources, and inept management of increasing complexity in the face of accelerating existential threats to our continued survival as a sustainable species, let alone a coherent or progressive civilization, for us to do much, if anything, to reverse course or stave off our eventually very grim fate.

To paraphrase Poe, as noted by Mac on twitter, this is the exquisite horror of our current reality.

7:40 AM
Dedroidify said...

Excellent. McKenna words are the best words.

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