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Nature is a phantom that sprang entirely from the Great Forgetting, which, after all, is precisely a forgetting of the fact that we are exactly as mu… - Daniel Quinn
" "Nature is a phantom that sprang entirely from the Great Forgetting, which, after all, is precisely a forgetting of the fact that we are exactly as much a part of the processes and phenomena of the world as any other creature, and if there were such a thing as Nature, we would be as much a part of it as squirrels or squids or mosquitoes or daffodils. We are unable to alienate ourselves from Nature or to 'live against' it. We can no more alienate ourselves from Nature than we can alienate ourselves from entropy. We can no more live against Nature than we can live against gravity. On the contrary, what we're seeing here more and more clearly is that the processes and phenomena of the world are working on us in exactly the same way that they work on all other creatures. Our lifestyle is evolutionarily unstable—and is therefore in the process of eliminating itself in the perfectly ordinary way.
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About Daniel Quinn
Daniel Clarence Quinn (October 11, 1935 – February 17, 2018) was an American author, cultural critic, and publisher of educational texts, best known for his novel Ishmael, which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991 and was published the following year.
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Daniel Clarence Quinn
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Additional quotes by Daniel Quinn
What is observed in the human population is that intensification of production to feed and increase the population invariably leads to a still greater increase in population. I’ve seen this called a paradox, but in fact it’s only what the laws of ecology predict. Listen to it again: “Intensification of production to feed an increase the population invariably leads to a still greater increase in population.”
This may be totally wrong, I told him. This may just be the simple truth, but this is what I hear: 'sure, you can save the world, but you're really going to hate it. It's really going to be painful.'
"Why is it going to be painful?"
"Because of all the stuff we have to give up. But as I say, this may just be the simple truth."
"No, it's not the simple truth, Julie. It's Mother Culture's simple lie. Although Mother Culture is a metaphor, she really does behave uncannily like a real person sometimes. Why do you think she would tell this particular lie?"
"She wants to discourage us from changing, I guess."
"Of course. Her whole function is to preserve the status quo. This is not a peculiarity of your Mother Culture. In every culture, it's the function of Mother Culture to preserve the status quo."
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