Mark Rowlands > Quotes

“In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“What is best about our lives -the moments when we are, as we would put it, at our happiest- is both pleasant and deeply unpleasant. Happiness is not a feeling; it is a way of being. If we focus on the feelings, we will miss the point.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“Philosophers should be offered condolences rather than encouragement.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“Cheaters never prosper, we tell ourselves. But the ape in us knows it's not true. Clumsy, untutored, cheats never prosper. They are discovered and suffer the consequences [...]But what we apes despise is the clumsiness of their effort, the ineptness, the gaucherie. The ape in us does not despise the cheating itself; [...]”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“Além disso, somos individualmente o produto de forças que não escolhemos e que mal compreendemos. Não escolhemos nossos pais nem a época em que nascemos, e assim recebemos uma determinada herança genética sobre a qual não temos controle algum, mas que, até um ponto significante, tem controle sobre nós. Essa herança determina, em parte, as doenças a que somos suscetíveis e os limites de nossas capacidades intelectuais, atléticas e morais. Talvez não totalmente, mas o suficiente. Nascemos num ambiente que vai preencher o pouco espaço que sobra do que foi determinado geneticamente, um ambiente que, novamente, não escolhemos e sobre o qual mal temos controle, pelo menos durante nossos anos de formação. A maneira como somos e aquilo que fazemos são resultados de nossos genes e nosso ambiente, que, juntos, exercem em nós uma influência que compreendemos de forma bastante nebulosa. Era isso que os filósofos existencialistas, com Jean-Paul Sartre, por exemplo, queriam dizer quando afirmavam que somos jogados no mundo.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher at the End of the Universe: Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction Films

“It is a common misconception — pervasive and tenacious, but a misconception nonetheless — that arses are made for sitting on. It seems, instead, they are made for running.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“Para nosotros ningún momento es completo en sí mismo. Cada momento se ve adulterado, empañado por lo que recordamos que ha sido y lo que anticipamos que será. En cada momento de nuestra vida la flecha del tiempo nos mantiene inocentes y moribundos, y por eso creemos que somos superiores a los demás animales.”
― Mark Rowlands, El filósofo y el lobo (Biblioteca Abierta)

“When you play each point as it comes, or play each delivery on its own merits, you are doing just that: playing. But when the value of each point or delivery becomes instrumental, what you are doing is work.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“Love has many faces. And if you love, you have to be strong enough to look upon all of them. The essence of philia is, I think, far harsher, far crueller, than we care to admit. There is one thing without which philia cannot exist; and this is not a matter of feeling but of the will. Philia—the love appropriate to your pack—is the will to do something for those who are of your pack, even though you desperately don’t want to do it, even though it horrifies and sickens you, and even though you may ultimately have to pay a very high price for it, perhaps heavier than you can bear. You do this because that is what is best for them. You do this because you must. You may never have to do this. But you must always be ready to do it. Love is sometimes sickening. Love can damn you for all eternity. Love will take you to hell. But if you are lucky, if you are very lucky, it will bring you back again.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“The key to building distance in the long run is the ability of the mind to lie to the body — and be convincing.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“The function of religion is to make us feel better, by peddling a lie. The function of philosophy, and a carefully chosen birthday card, is to make us feel worse, by telling the truth. And the truth is of course: we get worse.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“There is an Iroquois myth that describes a choice the nation was once forced to make. The myth has various forms. This is the simplest version. A council of the tribes was called to decide where to move on for the next hunting season. What the council had not known, however, was that the place they eventually chose was a place inhabited by wolves. Accordingly, the Iroquois became subject to repeated attacks, during which the wolves gradually whittled down their numbers. They were faced with a choice: to move somewhere else or to kill the wolves. The latter option, they realized, would diminish them. It would make them the sort of people they did not want to be. And so they moved on. To avoid repetition of their earlier mistake, they decided that in all future council meetings someone should be appointed to represent the wolf. Their contribution would be invited with the question, ‘Who speaks for wolf?”
― Mark Rowlands

“Essas duas histórias - a do lado de dentro e a do lado de fora - podem ser contadas sobre cada um de nós. Ao chamá-las de 'histórias' não pretendo diminuí-las. Algumas são, apesar de tudo, verdadeiras. O problema é que temos muita dificuldade em ver como ambas as histórias que contamos sobre nós podem ser verdadeiras. O efeito da segunda história, aquela contada do lado de fora, parece uma drástica realocação do nosso papel na trama. Longe de sermos o personagem principal da história, estamos reduzidos a um figuração. A história do lado de dentro gira ao nosso redor, mas na outra história cada um de nós é apenas um simples personagem em meio a muitos outros, um personagem cuja entrada em cena é determinada por outras pessoas e que não tem nenhum controle real sobre a hora da sua saída do palco. As coisas que impulsinam nossas vidas, as coisas que queremos, nossos planos, projetos e metas - aquilo que podemos chamar de nossa motivação - são o resultado de forças que não controlamos. Aparentemente, nosso papel foi escrito por outra pessoa. Temos pouco controle sobre o seu conteúdo e não temos a menos ideia de qual é o seu sentido.

O choque das duas histórias é às vezes chamado de condição humana.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher at the End of the Universe: Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction Films

“A hole is defined by its edges, and these are not part of the hole. So a hole can exist only if there is something that is not a hole.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“Incluso fui vegetariano estricto durante un tiempo y, moralmente hablando, debería seguir siéndolo: es la única posición moral coherente con respecto a los animales. Sin embargo, aunque no soy tan malo como podría ser, tampoco soy tan bueno como debería.”
― Mark Rowlands, El filósofo y el lobo (Biblioteca Abierta)

“It is consciousness that brings both suffering and enjoyment to the world.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“The most important way of remembering someone is by being the person they made us — at least in part — and living the life they have helped shape. Sometimes they are not worth remembering. In that case, our most important existential task is to expunge them from the narrative of our lives. But when they are worth remembering, then being someone they have helped fashion and living a life they have helped forge are not only how we remember them they are how we honour them.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“Bad things need to be addressed, but good things do not. That is why consciousness will tend to focus on the bad.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“The marathon lane is largely empty, mostly silent: the road of the damned rather than the saved.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“In a similar vein, Taoism identifies freedom with wu wei: acting without acting.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles from Marathon to Athens with news of the Greek victory.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“La culpa no la tiene ninguna de las personas a las que llamo amigos, sino yo. Me falta algo. Y con el paso de los años me he ido dando cuenta poco a poco de que las decisiones que he tomado y la vida que he vivido han sido una respuesta a esa falta. Lo más significativo de mí, supongo, es lo que me falta.”
― Mark Rowlands, El filósofo y el lobo (Biblioteca Abierta)

“Running, in other words, removed an important constraint on our development as a species.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“The place that gave us the marathon also gave us philosophy. That place was the city-state of Athens in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“We do other creatures an injustice and ourselves a disservice when we forget from where our intelligence came. It did not come for free. In our distant evolutionary past we went down a certain road, a road that wolves, for whatever reason, did not travel. We can be neither blamed nor congratulated for the road we took. There was no choice involved. In evolution, there never is. But while there is no choice involved, there are consequences. Our complexity, our sophistication, our art, our culture, our science, our truths—our, as we like to see it, greatness: all of this we purchased, and the coin was schemes and deception. Machination and mendacity lie at the core of our superior intelligence, like worms coiled at the core of an apple.”
― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf

“Nietzsche tells us: be strong. What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“A zoologist from another universe, where we can suppose the two laws do not apply, might justifiably classify most earthly fauna as subspecies of worm. We are superstructures built on and around our alimentary canal — on and around the worm that we once were.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“It is therefore not implausible that there is a connection between the rhythm of the body involved in running and the presence of the brain activity involved in higher cognitive functions.”
― Mark Rowlands, Running with the Pack

“In tutte le corse lunghe ben riuscite, arriva il punto in cui smetto di pensare, e a quel punto cominciano i pensieri. A volte sono insignificanti, a volte no. Correre è lo spazio aperto dove vanno a giocare i pensieri. Non corro per pensare. Ma quando corro, i pensieri arrivano. Non sono esterni alla corsa, come una sorta di premio o di valore aggiunto. Fanno parte di quel che è la corsa stessa, della sua essenza. Quando il mio corpo corre, anche i miei pensieri corrono e in un modo che ha ben poco a che fare con i miei stratagemmi o le mie scelte.”
― Mark Rowlands, Correre con il branco: La filosofia della corsa e tutto quello che ho imparato dalla natura selvaggia