Portable Wisdom

Author: Walter Mosley

Quotations


This faith in consciousness

We are ambivalent, combative, stubborn, wildly changeable beings that have the natural schizophrenic facility to love and hate at the same time. We respond, with Pavlovian predictability, to invisible forces such as the economic infrastructure, ever-changing technology, and unconscious instincts, all the while believing that we are fully conscious beings making decisions based on logic arisen from observations informed by eternal truths. This faith in consciousness is, in the mildest language possible, misplaced.

From the book Folding the Red Into the Black: Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century

— 2016


Thralls to group instincts

Maybe bees and ants don’t mind being thralls to group instincts but people, I feel, do. And so the question that human beings must ask is, “How do I live my own life and survive, even prosper, while sharing the load of the greater culture?”

From the book Folding the Red Into the Black: Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century

— 2016


A world that is tolerable

We have to stop and pull back, look at ourselves and each other and wonder if there is a way that each and every one of us (or at least the vast majority of us) can agree on the elements that make a world that is tolerable: a world with enough food and warmth and pleasant distractions; a world where love and belief are okay, even primary.

From the book Folding the Red Into the Black: Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century

— 2016

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