Walter Truett Anderson > Quotes

“One species on the planet, and one species only, has reached the point of being able to have an impact on the evolutionary fortunes of all other species and upon the functioning of all ecosystems. We also have, in a way that is not true for any other species, a relationship to the planet as a whole and to the future. We live with all life.”
― Walter Truett Anderson

“It would be a great step toward a truly civil society if we understood that our public discourse isn’t based on “hard facts,” that all our wisdom is finite, and that nobody’s opinion (not even yours or mine) is the final word.”
― Walter Truett Anderson, We the Planet: Evolutionary Governance and Biophilia in the Anthropocene

“We are indeed seeing in our time the birth of a global superculture that pours together bits and pieces of many different cultures. But it is not just a combination of pieces, and neither will it be merely an homogenization; human beings are far too inventive for that, and the human mind is far too complex. We”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“In order for the postmodern worldview to emerge fully and mature, it needs, among other things, a better sense of history—an idea of what it is the human species has found out about itself in recent centuries, and what effects that discovery has had on us. It”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“In order for the postmodern worldview to emerge fully and mature, it needs, among other things, a better sense of history—an idea of what it is the human species has found out about itself in recent centuries, and what effects that discovery has had on us. It is not hard to find some of that in the public record. The postmodern worldview has been a long time in coming. And in recent decades it has been anything but shy about proclaiming its imminent arrival.”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“Everybody knows there is a global culture—an ever-growing web of ideas held together by the majority of human beings. Yet nobody has much of an idea of what it is. No team of social scientists has yet gone forth to do the global opinion survey that would tell us (at least those of us who believe in opinion surveys) what knowledge and values the world’s 5.2 billion people share in common.”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“The British zoologist Richard Dawkins, working in the same general direction as the semioticists, coined the term memes to describe replicating mental patterns—the cultural equivalent of genes. As examples of memes he notes “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.” And so all the T-shirts and jeans and sneakers and suits are not only things but ideas. They carry (if nothing else) the far-from-trivial message that human beings everywhere have more or less similar bodies that can be encased in more or less similar pieces of clothing. And,”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“The new polarization is a split between different kinds of belief, not between different beliefs. It divides those who believe from those who have beliefs. It pits fundamentalists—who may be fundamentalists of religion, science, ideology, or cultural tradition—against an opposition called relativists here, secular humanists there, religious liberals somewhere else.”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“In a way, the fearful fundamentalists are right: globalism does undermine systems of absolute value and belief. But in a way they are wrong: the systems of value and belief do not immediately disappear—people simply inhabit them in a different fashion, and sometimes the old ways turn out to have a surprising amount of life left in them. The human mind has a great repertoire of ways to accept and honor social constructions of reality without swallowing them whole. Globalizing processes require us to renegotiate our relationships with familiar cultural forms, and remind us that they are things made by people: human, fallible things, subject to revision. Globalism”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“Gandhi is best remembered for his adherence to the principle of nonviolence; but no less important was his adherence to non-demonization. Even when he challenged the policies of the government, he refused to characterize individuals responsible for them as evil; he always remained willing to enter into personal communication with government officials—even the judges who sentenced him to prison. The purpose of fighting, he would tell his followers, is to change things—not to punish.”
― Walter Truett Anderson, We the Planet: Evolutionary Governance and Biophilia in the Anthropocene

“Consider, for example, the image of a young Palestinian soldier that a reporter I know saw standing guard in the hills of Lebanon. He was fighting to preserve his ancient culture and its identity. He wore sneakers, blue jeans, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. He carried an Uzi.”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

“This polarization has an unmistakably global dimension to it. Even in the small towns where folks bicker with one another about how to run the schools, the local issues and rivalries are overshadowed by a general feeling that all social orders—definitely including small-town America—are being drawn into something much larger.”
― Walter Truet Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World