The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. […] The end of the world as we know it is also the end of a way of knowing the world
I’d say that a social contract fit for the future has probably got to be eudaimonic, centered on the right to have the capacity to create — and the responsibility to pursue — lives lived meaningfully well.
There are good stories and mediocre stories and downright bad stories. How are they to be judged? If they do not aim at a static or “literal” reality, how can we discern whether one telling of events is any better or more worthy than another?
The answer is this: a story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And “making sense” must here be understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ear to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to rejuvenate one’s felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.
— David Abram - The Spell of the Sensuous
Go out in a field and lie down at night. Look DOWN into the stars. Pretend that gravity has you glued to the bottom of this planet. How do you know which way is up?
Most of us are accustomed to consider the self, our innermost essence, as someting incorporeal. Yet consider: without this body, without this tongue or these ears, you could neither speak nor hear another’s voice. Nor could you have anything to speak about, or even to reflect on, or to think, since without any contact, any encounter, without any glimmer of sensory experience, there could be nothing to question or to know. The living body is thus the very possibility of contact, not just with others but with oneself - the very possibility of reflection, of thought, of knowledge.
— Merleau-Ponty via David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous
…[E]ach atom turns out to be nothing but the potentialities in the behavior pattern of others. What we find, therefore, are not elementary space-time realities, bu rather a web of relationships in which no part can stand alone; every part derives its meaning and existence only from its place within the whole.
— Henry P. Stapp
Our world is threatened by a crisis whose extent appears to escape those who have the power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything—except our way of thinking. Thus we slide toward an unparalleled catastrophe. We need an essentially different way of thinking if humanity wants to survive.
— Albert Einstein
