"We can wrap you in a full-body suit of neoprene, heat-resistant rubber. Or we can raise the temperature in Cosmo's office to 98.6 degrees - which is probably what we'll have to do, because the neoprene would suffocate you. "
“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
"I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.
PKD writing presciently about our current information age?
"It is like information theory; it is noise driving out signal. But it is noise posing as signal so you do not even recognize it as noise...If you can float enough disinformation into circulation you will totally abolish everyone’s contact with reality, probably your own included."
Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
"They always slept from November to April, because such was the custom of their forefathers, and Moomins stick to tradition. Everybody had a good meal of pinecones in their stomachs, just as their ancestors used to have.
The silence was deep and expectant.
Every now and then somebody sighed and curled deeper down under the quilt."
from 'Moominland Midwinter', by Tove Jansson #Bookstodon#Quotes#Moomins#Winter
“Mass #propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in #cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" #quotes#mediaStudies#commOdon#truth#agnotology#history
This Douglas Adams quote from 'The Salmon of Doubt' never stops being relevant, especially in a time where we've witnessed the damage disinformation and hate speech can cause. Lives have been literally lost, both by people spreading lies during the pandemic, and by bigoted rhetoric targeting women and marginalized groups. Legitimizing such views as just "difference of opinion" instead of challenging them for what they are only causes further harm.